Thursday, September 5, 2024

You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight; Midnight is the Darkest Hour

So two that were kind of meh. "You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight" is an ode to slasher films of the 80s. Charity has an awesome job: she works at Camp Mirror Lake, where fans of the film pay to be scared out of their minds. Charity and her coworkers dress up as victims and killers every night and scare the bejesus out of a new group of paying tourists. I would sincerely apply for this job right now if it really existed. 

What Charity doesn't know is that Camp Mirror Lake isn't just a filming location for a cheesy movie, it really was a summer camp, and a whole lot of people died there over the years until it was shut down. Charity's coworkers are disappearing at an alarming rate. But Charity is the Final Girl in the simulation, and Final Girls don't die. I felt like it was a pretty good ride until close to the ending, the resolution just didn't stick right. 


"Midnight is the Darkest Hour" was a different beast. It was a super slow start, but I did like the somewhat ambiguous ending. 

Ruth lives in Louisiana, in a small, backwards town where her preacher father's word reigns supreme. Her father is an old-school fire and brimstone, women belong in the kitchen, type of a guy, so Ruth wasn't allowed to date or even go off to college. She did make a friend in high school: a boy named Everett, an outsider due to his alcoholic, non-church going father. She and Ever share a terrible secret: they killed a man who attacked her. After high school Ever left town while Ruth moved out of her parent's house and started working at the library. Ever comes back to town every once in a while and Ruth always looks forward to seeing him. 

Several prominent townspeople have been murdered, and Ruth's father stirs up the town against Everett. Ruth is determined to defend him, even if it means throwing away everything she's ever known. 


 

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