Midnight Son (2011) starring Zak Kilberg, Maya Parish, Jo D. Jonz, Larry Cedar directed by Scott Leberecht Movie Review

Midnight Son (2011)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Zak Kilberg in Midnight Son (2011)

A Bloody Valentine

By night Jacob (Zak Kilberg) works as a security guard but before the sun can rise he is ensconced back in this basement apartment, the windows boarded up to shield him from the sun as he has a rare skin condition which causes him to burn if sun touches his skin. But he is going through something, some sort of growing pain as he finds himself craving blood which he manages to obtain from a butcher. He also starts to have feelings for Mary (Maya Parish), a young woman who when she isn't bartending is selling glow sticks on a street corner or doing drugs. But an incident with Mary leads to him craving human blood which he finds himself having to obtain from a hospital orderly called Marcus (Jo D. Jonz) except it seems that Marcus hasn't been completely honest with how he is coming across the supply of blood and things start to get way out of hand.

As "Midnight Son" started I had this feeling that this may be a mistake as it was clearly low budget. Now I have nothing against low budget but a low budget vampire movie which has a romantic element and an actor with a touch of the Robert Pattinson about him and I was not entirely sure whether sacrificing 90 minutes of the day for this was going to be worth it. I was wrong as what initially looked a bit like it could be ropey turned in to a fascinating character study with a creative turn of events.

Maya Parish in Midnight Son (2011)

So here we have a young man who doesn't know what he is other than he is highly allergic to sunlight but then finds himself going through various changes. On one hand he finds himself having feelings for Mary who he becomes aware of does drugs but can't moan because of his own little secret. That secret is that he has started to need human blood to survive but that provides conflict as he wants to protect Mary from what he is becoming. This makes for a fascinating romantic drama which to be frank smashes "Twilight" out of the park when it comes to romantic depth.

But then on top of this we have the situation with Marcus as Jacob feels conflicted when he learns how he is coming across blood which puts him in jeopardy especially when cops start sniffing around when there is a murder in the area. And this understandably adds another dimension to the story as does the fact that Jacob is also a talented artist with Mary finding someone who loves his pictures of sunsets and sun rises. As I said there is an interesting turn of events which makes "Midnight Son" intriguing from start to finish.

What this all boils down to is that "Midnight Son" is one of the most fascinating and captivating vampire movies I have come across in a long time. It certainly pushes the bad memory of the "Twilight" movies to one side with this intriguing take on vampires.

Tags: Vampire Movies


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