The Midnight Man

The Midnight Man stars horror legends Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street) and Lin Shaye (Insidious) in this remake of the 2013 Irish horror movie Midnight Man and presumed inspired by The Midnight Game, the 2013 film adapted from the creepypasta of the same name. Our legendary icon's portrayals are not at their best, however it's not the acting that disengages the audience, but rather writer and director Travis Zariwny's bland script. Zariwny successfully creates a few moments of tension throughout but the missed opportunities are too many.

In the well-maintained attic fully furnished with a curious male mannequin and a gun with three bullets, a sealed box containing the pieces needed to play The Midnight Game, is discovered. The cursed pagan game awaits innocent curiosity to thus bring forth a demonic spirit, The Midnight Man-an evil so smart, its strength lies in its savvy to trick players to their demise.

Follow the rules and you will be safe, don't and you will die! Only problem with the 'rules' of this game is that time and time again we observe, the Midnight Man does not like to follow rules as he "does not like to lose."

Decades before in the very mansion Alexandra (Gabrielle Haugh) now resides as caretaker to her declining grandmother Ana (Lin Shaye), The Midnight Game was played with dire consequence. Once again the box is finally opened by Alex and her friend Miles (Grayson Gabriel), who will wager everything for a few hours of trying to stay alive. Although one can't help but wonder "why on earth would anyone would want to play this 'game'?"

Suspend your disbelief as we may for even the best of horror films, but unfortunately The Midnight Man still falls short on scares. Contributed to bland CGI, the monster's lackluster appeal mixed with its obvious Halloween store allure, and The Midnight Man is a bore. The fact that the imminently endangered teens have full sentence conversations with the raspy voiced Midnight Man himself takes away from the suspense at once.

Quite possibly the most absurd aspect of the film happens when in the midst of fighting off The Midnight Man, Alex and Miles find themselves answering a knock on the door by a third friend, Kelly (Emily Haine) who we discover is well versed on the Urban Legend and therefore remains in the house to help her friends. "You can get out now," Alexandra tells Kelly. "I wouldn't desert my friends," she replies. (She probably should have heeded the warning if you catch my drift.)

The Midnight Man is a glossy, commercial looking film that will keep viewers tuned in from start to finish. As a background movie or out of desperation, the film will suffice. The biggest crime though that The Midnight Man has commited is that you will likely not remember much of it after a short time.

Poorly written, poorly directed, poorly edited. This movie is a muddled mess, with characters doing even more stupid things than usual. Your friend is in immanent danger and can't leave the room, but you can. You leave to get something that will help. Instead of rushing back to your friend you decide to have a romantic conversation with your romantic interest in the hallway. Then you decide it would be a good idea to have a 10 or 15 minute conversation with another character, all the while aware that your friend in the next room could be dying.

Midnight Man is a poorly produced entry in the urban legend sub-genre, grab-bagging various horror tropes, and blandly applying them to a script which has little internal logic and a stupid ending to cap it all off. One of the worst horror movies I've seen in quite some time.

The film isn't terrible, more so the basic premise.

I found myself just constantly asking questions as nothing made sense.

The main question being, why would ANYONE play this "game"? There seems to be no benefit to anyone playing, even if they win?

I'm a fan of Creepypasta. This movie was straight from a story called "The Midnight Game". The movie did a decent job of explaining how the game is played and sticking to the original Creepypasta storyline. The performance of Ms. Shaye was Excellent. It did get a bit muddled in places, and some bits were added that I think should of either been omitted or explained better. But all in all, one of the better Creepypasta adaptations I've seen.

Wow did this movie manage to hit a lot of pet peeves with me. It's not well acted, it's got a LOT of really convoluted and seemingly nonsensical rules, characters are wildly stupid or just immediately buy into this supernatural horror story for seemingly no apparent reason and worst of all, this seems like it could actually be an entertaining concept. I like the idea of the Midnight Man, but this delivery was awful to me. I suppose, as a caveat I should say that I didn't know until after the movie that this was based on a legit urban legend. Maybe if I'd grown up with this or ever heard it before it would've made a little more sense but even so, it doesn't change the overwhelming stupidity of these characters.

I really can't imagine ever recommending this to anyone that doesn't enjoy bad horror movies, I know those people are out there. To everyone else, there are much better movies, go watch one of them and let this slip through the cracks. Maybe someday someone will try their hand at this again and make a better version.