AFTER MIDNIGHT (2019) (Umbrella Entertainment DVD Review)

AFTER MIDNIGHT (2019) 

Label: Umbrella Entertainment
Region Code: Region-FREE (NTSC) 
Rating: MA
Duration: 83 Minutes 
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1) 
Director: Jeremy Gardner 
Cast: Brea Grant, Jeremy Gardner, Justin Benson, Henry Zebrowski, Ashely Song, Nicole Masciotra, Taylor Zaudtke  

At the start of the film our main character Hank (director Jeremy Gardner, The Battery) is living with the fact that his girlfriend of the last ten years,  Abby (Brea Grant, Beyond the Gates), has seemingly left him. We find him barricaded in the front room of his dilapidated Florida home with a shotgun in hand, sitting on a couch that blocks the front door. directly behind him there's a splintered hole in the door, a remnant of him having fired his shotgun through it, supposedly at some sort of strange creature that's been trying to claw it's way inside his house at night ever since Abby left. His brother Shane (Justin Benson, The Endless) is a local cop, and he chalks it all up a bit of hysteria, dismissing the scratches on the exterior of the front door to a curious black bear, and attributing Hank's monster-talk as hysteria fueled by alcohol and loneliness. Hank is otherwise convinced that there's something strange visiting him at night, but is it all in his head, or is there actually something malevolent living in the tall grass of the everglades that seems to envelope his home?  

After Midnight is an interesting hybrid of a film, on one hand it's a creature feature, on the other it's a surprisingly poignant  meditation on the dissolution of a relationship. Throughout the film there are flashbacks to the earlier stages of his relationship with Abby, the happy couple settling into Hank's ancestral home, drinking wine and listening to mix tapes, but then we see the normal cracks appear in relationships. Abby seems unhappy with Hank's willingness to take their relationship to the next level, she wants kids and he doesn't seem to want that, so it's not the perfect love that hank might be remembering. 

Eventually Abby is back in the picture and the pair make an effort to recover what might not be lost, and the film seemingly drifts away from creature feature it's been establishing, giving credence to the idea that the midnight monster might be a figment of a sad, broken-hearted man. Then comes a surprising heartfelt and touching karaoke performance with a group of friends... and the film returns to the former, and I loved hank's choice of hand-held weapon, it's pretty unique. It's an offbeat and not altogether seamless marriage of seemingly disparate genres but I absolutely loved it, rarely have romance and monsters been so strangely entwined.

Audio/Video: After Midnight (2019) arrives on region-free NTSC formatted DVD from Umbrella Entertainment framed in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1). The lensing of the film looks great, with the cinematography capturing the tall grass exteriors and dilapidated interiors of the house well, colors are well-defined and blacks are acceptable for a standard-definition presentation. Audio on the disc comes by way of English Dolby Digital 5.1, and this being the sort of film that goes from quiet to loud often and I found myself having to crank up the volume and then turn it back down just as quickly. As is often the case with these film-only releases from Umbrella there are no subtitles, and this is certainly a film that would have benefited from a subtitle option. Uneven sound levels aside the music from bands The Parlors, The Hummingbirds and others sounds good, but the quiet-loud-quiet dynamic proved a bit of a chore to manage without subtitles.

There are absolutely no extras on this release, not even a trailer or static start-up menu, once you pop in the disc it begins playing immediately. The single-disc release comes housed in a standard keepcase with a singe-sided sleeve of artwork featuring a cool illustration of the creature, the same artwork is replicated on the disc. 

Jeremy Gardner first popped-up on my radar by directing the indie end-of-the-world film The Battery (2012), which is still a bit of an unsung gem, he then popped-up as an actor in the several films of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Spring, The Endless) and a few more Joe Begos (Mind's Eye, Bliss). He's been operating within that circle of independent filmmakers who I think are all doing great stuff, and After Midnight (2019) shows his own growth as a director. It's not a perfect film, but I do love the intermingling of a sweet love story with a creature-feature, and I am looking forward to whatever his next film ends up being. I sort of hope it's horror but based on what he accomplished with this film he could go in any direction and I would still be there for it. This comes highly recommended, I do hope that Umbrella at some point release both The Battery and After Hours as a double-feature Blu-ray the way they have Joe Begos VFW and Bliss, that would be awesome. 

More Screenshots from the DVD 

THE ENDLESS (2017) (Umbrella DVD Review)

THE ENDLESS (2017) 

Label: Umbrella Entertainment
Region Code: Region-FREE 
Rating: M
Duration: 111 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital Surround 5.1 
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1)
Cast: Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson
Director: Callie Hernandez, Emily Montague, James Jordan, Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson

Lovecraftian cosmic terror has been a theme for me this week, having reviewed Dagon (2001), In the Mouth of Madness (1995) and now the latest from Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, the duo that brought us Spring (2014), I feel as if maybe the old gods are trying to tell me something. In the cosmic horror The Endless (2017) we have a pair of siblings, Justin (Justin Benson) and Aaron (Aaron Moorhead), eking out a rather shitty life of poverty somewhere in California, performing menial jobs and eating lots of Ramen. We learn that ten years prior the older brother Justin and his sibling were part of what they call a "UFO death-cult", with Justin pulling himself and his younger brother Aaron out of it for fear of cult-y stuff like ritual castration and deadly kool-aid drinking. Now years later they receive a video cassette in the mail from cult member Annie (Callie Hernandez, Blair Witch) that triggers a return to the Southern Californian desert were the cult have a compound, the surface level premise for the re-visit is closure, but you get the feeling that the brothers sort of miss the communal lifestyle despite recognizing that it wasn't healthy for them, though the younger sibling has fonder memories of the place. 

They return not knowing how they'll be received, but they are greeted warmly by Hal (Tate Ellington, Sinister 2) and welcomed by everyone else with open arms, but the friendliness has an underlying strangeness to it, it is a cult after all. As we see more of life within the cult it seems more hipster communal than straight-up cult, but that's not to say there isn't lots of weirdness afoot.

The communal life is very artisan, everyone has a skill, big red beardo Tim (Lew Temple, Waiting) makes an addictive home brew, Anna makes clothing, they practice archery, art and magic, and then there's a strange game of tug-o-war they call "the struggle", which entails yanking on a rope that ascends into the night sky, and something unknown and unseen is tugging on the other end, and while the older brother offers an Earthbound explanation it's dismissive and not at all disarming. While all this is happening the cult members give each other in strange looks in knowing ways implying even more an air of mystery.

The mountainous area is covered with strange nail-shaped rock formations which are never truly explained, it's sort of tossed off that they're ancient lava-rock formations, there's a circular pattern motif throughout, and a localized optical illusion that gives the appearance of two moons in the sky at night, and the discovery that there are recurring time loops in certain areas, and that a the higher power regularly drops communications into their lives by way of Polaroids and vintage media like video cassettes and hard drives. The strangeness isn't isolated to the commune, others in the vicinity who have nothing to do with the cult seem to be stuck in their own personal time-loop Hells, one looking to have originated back to the 18th century, and it's interesting to note the duration of the time loops seem to vary in length wildly. There's also talk of three moons appearing in the sky, signaling something called "the ascension", which surely does sound cult-y and ominous, but what we witness and what's semi-explained hints at anything from a Lovecraftian elder god to an alien influence, or maybe even interdimensional beings, and I love that this movie doesn't reveal too much, it has a mystery that it keeps to itself. I found multiple viewing of the film rewarding, I don't think one is enough, now having watched it four time now I think I have a good understanding of the internal logic, but it still has enough ideas floating around that I think I could watch this with fresh eyes again and walk away with something new to ponder.

In a way the myriad of genuinely interesting ideas the movie floats is a bit of drawback, it's a micro-budgeted film and the budget ceiling does seem to hamper the effectiveness of the exploration of these ideas, but even so the promise shines through with enough cleverness and indie-ingenuity that it worked well enough, it's not wholly satisfying, but I love a movie that reaches for the moon, even if it only lands in the neighbors yard, there's still a lot to celebrate. The main cast here is quite good, including the directors who appear in the main roles, really driving home the main theme of brothers coming together and making important realizations about themselves, but there was one thing that irked me, whenever they were presented with something so fantastically strange or terror-riffic they were so calm and non-plussed about it, a scene of a brother wandering through the desert when confronted by the sun being blotted out for a second, magically appearing Polaroids and an unseen force would have sent me running in fright, he just sort of shrugs it off. The older brother doesn't really show any concern until the dark unknown literally brushes up against him! 

Something I think that is missing here is a consistent tone and carry-through, directing and starring in a movie is fraught with problems I assume, and I think a lack of perspective and through line might be one of the casualties here, but not to a ruinous degree. Sometimes the tone just shifted in a strange way, there's a lot of sibling humor in the dialogue that interrupted a moment or two of weirdness or seriousness that felt off to me. Back to the pluses, the eerie synth score from Jimmy LaValle (The Album Leaf) really amps up the strange tonal quality of the film, interestingly recycling the public domain song "House of the Rising Sun" (made famous by The Animals) over and over in both song and score interpretation, it has a strange quality about it that fits the film perfectly. 

The look of the film is a mixed bag for me, shot anamorphically it has a kind of ugly desaturated, low-contrast look about it, but I like the way the semi-flat image distorts giving this reality-bender an otherworldly feel at times, other times I didn't care for it. Movies are like comics for me, if I don't like the artwork I find it hard to get into the story, but I did come around to it eventually. At times the film brought to mind influential interdimensional lo-fi film Equinox (1967), I really feel that movie had an influence on this one, the directors have a love for Lovecraftian terror, as evidenced by their previous film Spring (2014), and I would not be surprised if Equinox was on their mind while making this one, but I guess I could just be reading that into it based on my own love for it.  

Audio/Video: The Endless (2017) arrives on region-free DVD from Umbrella Entertainment,  the image is anamorphic 2.40:1 widescreen with an English Dolby digital surround mix, there are no subtitles. The disc looks and sounds good, no issues with the A/V, but unfortunately the disc is barebones without a start-up menu or trailer. This is definitely a film along the lines of Donnie Darko where I could have found myself pouring through the extras looking for insights, so a few more extras would have been appreciated.   

The Endless (2017) is a thought-provoking slice of Lovecraftian cosmic terror that's overstuffed with big ideas and themes, while the budget doesn't always make it easy to explore those ideas I like the that not everything is revealed and over-explained. If you were a fan of the directors previous film Spring (2014) I think you're primed for this one, or if you're just into weird Lovecraftian horror, there's a lot here to digest, I recommend watching it more than once, it's one of those movies.