Midnight Kiss, 2019
Cameron (Augustus Prew) goes on a group vacation for New Year's Eve with his ex-boyfriend Joel (Scott Evans), Joel's new boyfriend Logan (Lukas Gage), Hannah (Ayden Mayeri), and Zachary (Chester Lockhart). The friend group has a tradition of finding and hooking up with a stranger, the goal being to guarantee a midnight kiss. But there's a person with a very sharp knife and a leather mask who clearly has some lingering resentment about how the game was played in the past . . .
I'm sure if you made a word cloud of my writing about horror movies, the words
male gaze would be lit up like a Christmas tree in huge font. But I have to say, this was the first time I feel as if I've seen the male gaze applied to male bodies. While the film itself is kind of a run-of-the-mill slasher, the way it applies horror tropes to male characters gives it a little boost of interest. For example, the opening sequence involves a male character having a phone conversation . . . while dressing and undressing to try on different shorts. There's one character we never see nude or taking a shower and, you guessed it, it's the lone female character.
What I most enjoyed about this film was that it employed one of my favorite horror tropes: the double bad guy. You know, like the homophobic detective in
Butcher Baker? I really like it when there's an obviously bad character, something that adds some intrigue to the social dynamics between the characters. Put simply, Joel is bad news. He's controlling and manipulative, just short of the point where you wonder why these other seemingly not horrible people continue to hang out with him. As the movie goes on, this escalates, from him criticizing Logan's cologne to later forcing him to take drugs at the party. It either means that he's going to turn out to be the killer, or it means that things will be very complicated in the final act. Either way, I am a total sucker for this trope.
Cameron is an engaging lead character, basically watching Joel repeat his relationship nonsense with Logan. He has good chemistry with all of the other characters, and he feels like the only character who is genuinely friends with Hannah. Aside from Joel who is a total turd and Zachary who is very underdeveloped, the core characters are sympathetic and you want to root for them.
Unfortunately, this movie feels like it had 60-70 minutes to offer but was contractually obligated to be 90 minutes long. A sequence where Cameron hooks up with a cute guy at the nightclub goes on for too long, as do some of the sequences once the group returns to their rental house after the New Year's Eve party. It lags the pace of the film, which is unfortunate. There are some good tensions that build during the party, but then like 15 minutes of kind of blah time before things really kick off again at the house.
The kills are decent but nothing special. Worth a watch. And if you want to see some internet homophobia in action, check out the user ratings distribution for this film on the IMDb.
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