indie horror

Mackenzie Carpenter is your typical 17 year old. She thinks life in the O.C. is boring, tends to sneer at most of the stereotypical O.C. kids and wants nothing more than to rock out and be cool. Her plan comes to a screeching halt when her group of friends start to turn up dead one by one in bloody and gruesome ways. The one key factor to all of the murders is the sighting of one "Horny the Clown", mascot of the local Hellaburger Fast Food chain, fleeing the scene of the crimes.

At first glance, director Jack Messitt's snappy 2008 feature-length debut "Midnight Movie" may seem like yet another tired retread populated with a handful of pretty actors who are probably too young to genuinely appreciate the movies that inspired this surprisingly sharp, blood-drenched excursion into the well-worn slasher subgenre. And, for the most part, your knee-jerk reaction to the film is fairly accurate. However, because Messitt and everyone involved appear to be having such a blast with the material, chances are you'll forgive the picture its trespasses, of which there are a few.

We've got a few independent filmmakers that visit the site from time to time, so I'm sure they can relate to this scenario. You figure you can write, act, and direct. You're working on a shoestring budget. All you need is a few crappy actors, a guy or two to work the cameras and a monkey to work the fog machine. The problem is, everybody else on your crew, they're not quite as into the whole idea as you. They screw off, joke around at inappropriate times and in general slack off. So when the crew quits due to your unconventional temper, you're stuck with half a movie. What to do?