After Midnight Review (2021) Worth Watching?

It's about a guy who goes all crazy after his girlfriend leaves. He sees monsters and stuff, but really he's just super bummed out.

After Midnight was directed by Jeremy Gardner (who also directed The Battery) and Christian Stella and stars Jeremy Gardner (from Fingers, Bliss and Spring), Brea Grant (from Sleep No More, Dead Night and All The Creatures Were Stirring) and Justin Benson (from The Endless).

Love will rip your heart out

For anyone familiar with Shudder, their originals are seriously hit and miss. Shudder is an absolute must have for every horror fan and I'm of course glad they're around (imagine if we only had Netflix for horror?!), but their definition of horror is sometimes, well, broad.

After Midnight is a romance drama from start to painful finish. There's a "monster" element and some attempts to create suspense around it, but at the end of the day it's just a movie about a breakup. Seriously, easily 90% of this movie is slow motion shots of this guy's girlfriend being happy and then abrupt cuts to him being sad.

The movie Spring comes to mind. It was made by the same guys who made Resolution and The Endless, both incredible sci-fi horrors. Spring is nothing like either, it's a lay-it-on-thick romance with a creature thrown in at the end.

The story revolves around a guy named Hank who is head over heels for his girlfriend Abby. They live in an old house in the country and do fun carefree things like smear paint on each other while renovating and sip wine under the stars while giving each other butterfly kisses. Then one day she bails and Hank immediately freaks out. He starts hitting the bottle HARD and blasting his shotgun at anything that moves (even blasting passing cars because of... heartache?). He gets emotional support from a few friends, which means he has long heart to heart conversations with each and every one while you're sitting there waiting for the horror movie to start. Then one day she just sorta wanders back home and then you spend your next 30 minutes watching them fight. Then they invite all of their friends over and you watch them make up and say sweet things to each other. Yeah, there's a monster here and there, but it's dumb and really had no reason to be in the movie other than to maybe make the trailer look cool.

Needless to say I was no fan of After Midnight.