The Midnight Game

Plot synopsis:
Perky blonde teenager Kaitlan (Renee Olstead) has decided to invite over a few of her friends after she finds that her parents are leaving her home alone for the weekend. She's planning for a small, relatively quiet get together with her friends Jenna (Valentina de Angelis) and Rose (Shelby Young), but Kaitlan soon finds that Rose has invited boys to the party, Shane (Guy Wilson) and Jeff (Spencer Daniels). Not wanting to seem uncool, Kaitlan allows the boys to stay and party. Eventually Shane suggests that they play The Midnight Game, where participants confess their deepest fears while performing a strange ritual. Anyone who performs the ritual inaccurately runs the risk of running into the Midnight Man, a terrifying figure that can bring the participants' fears to life. They must carry candles and if the candle extinguishes then they must relight it in ten seconds or surround themselves instantly with a circle of salt, or the Midnight Man will catch them. The teenagers originally think the game sounds fun and do not take the idea of the ritual seriously, beginning the game gleefully. Nothing happens for the first hour and a half, yet just as the group is starting to become complacent they begin to hear noises, and their candles start to go out. The boys decide to explore upstairs where they can hear unusual sounds, whilst the girls remain downstairs. Jeff and Shane discover a crucifix upstairs which unnerves them, and they are drawn back downstairs by the sound of the girls screaming; they saw a dark figure moving around outside the house. The candles all start to go out, and the group panics. Kaitlan attempts to end the game by turning on the lights, only to find that they do not work even though the power for the house is still running. After some time has passed, they eventually draw a circle of salt around themselves and huddle together, eventually falling asleep. At 3:33 AM the lights turn back on and the group awakes, thinking that the game is over. They do not realise that having failed to relight their candles in ten seconds and drawing the circle of salt well after they needed to, the midnight man has won the game.
The next morning, Rose awakes to find Jeff is gone. She goes downstairs to the kitchen, and finds that no one knows where Jeff is; Shane assumes that he has gone to basketball practice and texts him, with no response. Jenna, unprovoked, begins to verbally abuse Rose in a bout of sudden anger, accusing her of wanting to steal Shane and always trying to copy her. The others are stunned by Jenna's sudden moodswing, and later she apologises. Shane, Kaitlan and Jenna decide to go for a hike, whilst Rose chooses to stay at the house and take a nap. On the hike, Jenna begins accusing Shane of cheating on her and acts extremely angry for no reason, until her mood suddenly changes and she is abnormally happy, seeing shapes in the clouds that do not exist and skipping along. Meanwhile, back at the house Rose begins to hear strange noises and hallucinate unnerving things. Eventually, she walks into a room and sees the Midnight Man, a demonic pitch black figure. On the hike, Shane receives a text from Rose begging him to help her, and despite Jenna screaming for no reason when he suggests they go back, he and the others return to the house to find Rose huddled in the kitchen, clutching a knife and having a panic attack from seeing the Midnight Man. Shane coaxes Rose to drop the knife, and as she does Jenna begins panicking and acting paranoid. The group deduces that this must be because of the Midnight Game, and Rose decides to go home.
On her way home, Rose starts to hallucinate the Midnight Man again. She sees Jeff at the side of the road and pulls over to talk to him, only to find that he is undead. Rose backs away, and is hit by a car. She then wakes up in the car and realises that this was a hallucination, and decides to go back to the house. Back at the house, Jenna has been growing increasingly panicked and paranoid, hallucinating that Shane cheated on her with Kaitlan. She breaks down, and Shane attempts to comfort her.
The group realise that the reason these things are happening to them is because they did not follow the rules of the Midnight Game, and they decide to play again to see if that will end the chain of horrific events. As they begin the game for the second time, Shane recalls a blog he read on the internet about a boy who did not follow the rules of the game and ended up reliving his worst fears over and over until his death, and the theories he has read that people get trapped in an endless cycle of reliving their death over and over. He fears that this will happen to them. As they play the game, the candles blow out and they are unable to relight them. They intend to surround themselves with salt, but accidentally spill the salt, leaving them trapped to face the Midnight Man. Jenna goes upstairs, where she is taunted by a hallucination saying that everyone is against her and is driven to hang herself. Kaitlan is pushed off the balcony by the midnight man. Shane receives a text from Jeff stating he is in the basement, and discovers Jeff's corpse in a casket. When he returns to the house, Rose States that "he is behind you'", and he turns to see the midnight man. Shane runs out the house, pursued by the Midnight Man.
Suddenly, the clock turns to 3:33, and Shane, Rose, Kaitlan and Jenna all wake up on the floor, still alive. Jeff enters the house with a bottle of wine, and they are shocked to see that he is okay. It seems as though the five have survived the midnight game and that things will return to normal. However, the house is then shown to have been vacated for two years, and a Realtor shows a prospective Tenant around the house. He is put off buying it when he realizes it is where "the incident with the high school kids" took place and discusses the incident with a Realtor; how four high school students died, and one (Shane) disappeared, believed to have killed the others. As the man and the Realtor pull away from the house, Rose's car is shown pulling up to the front as it had at the beginning of the film, and the events from the beginning play out for a few minutes. As the camera pans away from the girls entering the house, Shane's corpse is shown in a pile of leaves across the street, vaguely hinting that the five teenagers are all dead and are stuck in an endless cycle of the Midnight Game.

Tags: insanity

Review:
Underwhelming.
This movie had so much promise with the pagan rituals and the interesting plot.
I had been waiting a good while to find it.
Even though it did bring in the over played teenagers playing a dare style situation on each other and trying to scare the girl into the boys arms, it still maintained value.
Unfortunately, the story line and ending left us feeling wanting.
It seemed to be heading to a great climactic event but it ended so abruptly that I wondered if I had blinked an missed something.
The acting was well done and believable mostly.
I enjoyed it until the anti-climax.
All in all it was enjoyable and great ideas that were not fully developed.
With the climax lacking, 3 stars is all we could agree on..
Dreadful.
Not even watching this on a fun Halloween night with your friends can save this film.
With a half-decent premise and a only a couple good jump scares, this movie is laughable.
Anywhere from the terrible acting to the failed scare tactics to, in my opinion, the dumbest decisions ever made by characters in any horror film I've ever seen, this movie fails on every level.
But like I said, it's pretty funny.
The runtime is 70 minutes, so it never feels drawn-out and knows exactly where to end.
And for the record, the film's conclusion is so confusing and jarring that it takes a rocket scientist to make sense of it, if it makes sense at all.
The film left me disappointed, cheated, and even a little angry.
However, you might have a few fun conversations about the film with your friends the next day, trying to make sense of an insensible, dumb horror movie..
Definitely a Must See. Very rarely do you find a B movie with Grade A horror!
Although this movie has not 1 known celebrity,it should have definitely had a run on the big screen!
At first, you think it's going to be the same old boring "teens incite boogeyman" theme but there's always something scary about performing games that can potentially be authentic in inciting evil entities.
However, after the first 20 minutes, you immediately know that you will be covering your eyes and will potentially be scared to go to bed without the lights on.
I recommend that you watch this with a friend...or twelve!.
Full of foreshadowing....
A-Z Horror Movie of the Day..."Midnight Game" (R - 2013 - US)Sub-Genre: Paranormal/DemonMy Score: 5.1Cast=4 Acting=6 Plot=7 Ending=7 Story=3 Scare=3 Jump=5 F/X=5 Creep=6 Demon=5After playing a pagan ritual on a dare, a group of high school students find themselves trapped in an endless cycle of their worst fears.Full or foreshadowing, this movie was so predictable that it made me laugh.
It was very cliché, but still a fun little movie with a couple of jumps and creeps to raise the heart rate a bit.
I liked how the movie ended, although very predictable.
Is it worth watching...sure I guess for the paranormal fan.
Otherwise, you're not missing anything if you don't.
Personally, I want to play the game for real and see what happens...who's with me?.
Confusing!.
I watched this film with my friend after doing some research on the pagan ritual.
We both found it interesting and gripping to begin with but after the first 30 or so minutes it became extremely confusing.Normally I wouldn't watch a film if it didn't contain some kind of familiar star so this was a first for me.I honestly believe that the ending should have been more clear and less murky.
Other than that the film wasn't as bad as it could have been.
The acting wasn't the best and could have been more convincing.
Some of the scenes when the girl who was going insane weren't as good as they could have been and for me the best parts of the film were the scenes when the jock walked around finding all of his friends dead.
My main question though is was it a dream or was it real because I am so confused and conflicted..
very bad movie to watch.
this movie was the worst movie ever!!!!
don't watch it because it really sucks or if you did already i feel bad for you !!!!
this movie is so stupid i swear!!!
it wasn't even scary to be honest.
when we thought the movie had reached its climax, it ended!!!
-.- i don't even know how you guys would like it because it is very vague.
aren't scary movies supposed to be scary??
well this one wasn't at all!!!
it was just plain stupid and A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY because i rented it on red box.I WISH I COULD HAVE MY TIME AND MONEY WASTED BACK!!!
movies like this get me very mad because instead of spending thousands, maybe millions, they could have given this money to poor people or helped them out you know?.
Incredible.
It's been a long time since I haven't seen a scaring movie like this one.
It was made the way any real good horror movie should be; by isolating people, then by building up slowly an atmosphere of horror around them, incorporating a lot of unexpected twist, all this by using logic and continuity.
The protagonist in the movie begin like every normal people would be by trying to play a satanic game; by distrust and low expectations.
They never made any illogical move or irrational action, they just simply act like normally scared people would act in their place, which made it easy to root for them.
For a movie build the same way as The Shining, I give the same mark as The Shining, a 10.