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The police track down a serial kidnapper and murderer of women by relying on Veronica’s projection psychic abilities to keep tabs on the killer’s every move before he claims another victim. When the rescue and apprehension of the killer went off without incident, saving a woman’s life as a direct result of Veronica’s supernatural ability, the exhaust Veronica returns to what’s consider her normal life but when she sleeps, dreams of a monstrous human figure with glowing red eyes haunts her dreams. Basking in a hot red glow, the monster lives in her closet and comes out when she sleeps, manifesting terrible visions Veronica can’t tell if she’s awake or dreaming of the monster in her wardrobe space. Every night the dreams become more intense and frightening and she senses losing control, it consumes her psychic powers and entrances her to confront her past with dire consequences that will change her life forever.
“Midnight Monster,” also originally known as “Closet Monster” and labeled on other global releases, is the Dustin Ferguson written and directed, psychic-powers and burning-eyed, night terror from 2023. Ferguson is no stranger to low-budget B-horror moviemaking have worn multiple hats in a budget that doesn’t allow for individual expertise. Having over two decades worth of directorial credits, including the penny-pinched and scantily-cladded thrills and coherent productions of “Horror Movie Workout,” “Mondo Shock,” and more fittingly enough “Penny Pinchers: The Kings of Low-Budget Horror,” a documentary about making a horror movie on pennies of the dollar, the multi-faceted filmmaker, who also goes by the alias Dark Infinity, utilizes his own independent film production company, SCS Entertainment, to finance and equip production costs by funneling working capital through non-studio and alternative- spurred means as Joseph Williamson (“Arachnado,” “Ebola Rex”) serve as producer and “Liza: Warden from Hell’s” Kevin Age and Brad Banacka as executive producers, all three have worked previous together on numerous films throughout the years.
Opening up “Midnight Monster” is the dramatic scene of Veronica using her powers inside a police interrogation room to track down a soulless killer before he nixes the life of another victim tied up in the back of his car, setting up Veronica’s uncanny abilities to project into current time through a personal belonging, or more technically known as psychoscopy, and she apparently does it very well to help authorities capture their suspect. This also sets up for the conjured misfortune of a closet monster haunting her sleep, representing or demonizing personal childhood trauma. Alana Dro (“Zombie Rage,” “Death Bitch”) steps into psychic-shoes of the closet creature plagued Veronica with little effort put into the character’s complexity of navigating her powers and her dreams to try and understand them better. Instead, Dro becomes more of a peepshow prop than a proper lead character trying to solve the evil enigma that skulks from out the closet. Not all the character flaws can be contributed to Dro with Veronica being written half-hearted into a narrative that requires her to be inquisitive and resolute in curing what haunts her. There are not many scenes shared between Dro and Robert Lankford (“Nemesis 5: The New Model”), who portrays the closet monster as more a tip-spear figurehead for Veronica’s ship of trauma rather than an actual beast with unknown intentions, but Veronica and the monster have their individualized zoned moments that are shared and connected only through the power of editing to create a surreal space of subliminal supernaturality between them. Other characters pop in and then pop out for non-reoccurring roles with the 80s-90s scream queen Brinke Stevens (“Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity,” “Nightmare Sisters”) being the most recognizable actress given primary credit. Jonathan Nation, Ronnie Angel, Joycelyne Lew, Guillaume Rivaud, Richard During, Roger Trexler, Vida Ghaffari, and Breana Mitchell have their moment as the rest of the cast.
Ferguson’s “Midnight Monster” has interesting, dark undertones of childhood trauma expressed through the manifestation of a monster whose power of Veronica holds her entranced, as if the monster is familiar to her. It can be understood that the monster represents someone who hurt her, abused her, or raped her as a child, someone close to her who’s authority and relationship has likely brainwashed her into trust, love, and affection. While these themes are provocatively deep and powerful, Ferguson can’t quite pull in “Midnight Monster’s” narrative into a balanced state and cheapens it with wash, rinse, and repeat scenes of Alana Dro full naked in the shower in an extended shoot of her getting wet and soapy. Not necessarily a bad thing to have an abundance of gratuitous nudity in a grindhouse picture, there’s typically only one shower scene per film and “Midnight Monster” has two with the same actress doing the exact same thing, a slow full-body soap up, for a good chunk of the already fleeting runtime. The second shower scene forces the narrative to wander off course and Ferguson tries to wrangle it back in by the finale ties all the pieces together with a meaty twist ending I found blindsided by, in a good way, but it also can feel and seem arbitrary and disconnecting with the introduction of new characters suddenly thrust into the fold without warning in its concluding moments.
A regular outlet for Dustin Ferguson’s films, Wild Eye Releasing continues to shower horror fans with more of filmmaker’s films onto DVD. “Midnight Monster” receives a MPEG2 encoded DVD5 in true 720p standard definition. The digital image is deconsecrated from its divinely detailed imagery due to poor, commercial equipment, and a lesser codec that’s not upscaled, creating more of a SOV aesthetic which I wholly believe to be the intent. Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on the DVD, the compressed image does decent capturing of the peripheral objects but without an spherical lens, there’s limitations to the scene. There are some gorgeously soft red lighting and glow to get the monster in the mood for scaring and for surrealism, but most of the film is considerably ungraded with not a lot of other pop to its palette. There LPCM stereo presents a fine U.S. English dialogue that isn’t quite robust in the forefront but has clarity and no obstruction and the rest of the ambient and environment sound is most comprised of added action in post-production. The entire encoding is a bit rough and ready, and again that’s likely purposeful in attempt to be a grindhouse picture. Encoded special features include an interview with actress Alana Dro, an image gallery, and trailers for “Midnight Monster” as well as other Wild Eye Releasing titles. There are also three fake grindhouse trailers at the beginning as 9-minutes’ worth of B-movie coming attractions with retro visual graphics and each film encased with a 8mm film filter to mimic vintage film stock and films. The clear DVD Amaray case has a neat and red color-infused, illustrated graphic art of the titular monster overlooking a sleeping woman with a reverse side containing a still of the monster. The runtime listed is 60 minutes, but I had clocked the film in under 50 minutes, even with the faux trailers. The region free DVD is not rated.
Last Rites: “Midnight Monster” plays out like a fever dream of serial killers and daddy issues but there’s not enough Scotch tape to make this digital reel work effectively, leaving Ferguson to piece together slim pickings on what could have been a promising night terror.
