Trauma

The trailer is way better than the movie itself. You are left with so many question to things that make no sense. The acting and the story line is terrible.

Acting was decent at best. The writing was atrocious. Too many impossibilities and timeline snafu's to even go into. Don't get me started on how much of a dumpster fire the ending was. Did I mention there were tons of impossibilities? Oh and a gazillion things were left unexplained that simply make no sense even to a troglodyte. I wouldn't even classify it as a "B" movie. More like a F movie for abject FAILURE to have one suspend belief. I can never get back those lost minutes of my life.

Where to begin. The acting was alright. The problem was the storyline you could tell right off the bat what was gonna happen. So easy to figure out what would have been great was if there was a huge plot twist at the end where you find out she did it all on purpose because she found out she was his mistress.

I didn't expect a lot from this film since it telegraphs "low budget" from the start, but it's a decent thriller. I'm pretty sure I've seen this plot before, but not entirely sure where. However, it's a good story so I can see how it gets reimagined periodically. There's a little bit of an attempt to mix up the "psychological thriller" formula up at the end. I'm not sure it totally works, but an effort was made. The movie sets out from the familiar car accident/coma combo and from there goes down roads that the thriller fan knows well, but I think if you're a genre fan, you'll find it acceptable viewing. If, however, you don't really get into the thriller conventions, it doesn't rise above them, so it's maybe worth skipping this one.

The movie poster for NIGHT NIGHT recalls old school movie posters, say from the age of Alfred Hitchcock. And its plot has more than a few passing Hitchcockian undertones, even if imitated pretty badly.

The first strike against the movie is its production values: they look so cheap that it is suprising to see at least a half-way realistic-looking accident-scene. But other than that, the cinematography almost yells "basement budget" in practically every scene.

The second strike is that the movie does not contain much tension, as it is possible to figure out what is really happening quite early in the movie. I dismissed it as way too implausible (see third point) and was therefore hoping for a plot twist involving the protagonist's brother, but the entire thread involving him ended up being irrelevant to the story.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the plot is so implausible that it not only passes the threshold of incredulity, but leaves it so far behind that it passes the threshold of stupidity. What are the chances of such an event happening? How did the police not figure it out immediately? How does the villain have such apparently superhuman powers in manipulating data remotely and killing a police officer on short notice without getting caught? Why was there no discussion about who was at fault in the accident before it was dumped on the audience at the end in a court scene? And what was up with that nonsensical, stupid epilogue?

As of this writing, NIGHT NIGHT is rated 7.3 on IMDb. I have found that, for whatever reason, high IMDb scores seem to be unreliable indicators of quality for recently made indie movies. A couple other low-budget, low-quality affairs with similar problems I have seen are TAKE OUT and a WISEGUY CHRISTMAS, which got 7.6 and 8.0 respectively, as of this writing. I think from now on I will ignore high IMDb scores for indie movies less than 3 years old.