Mostly, indie horror seems constrained, not by lack of funds, but by lackluster creativity and a sort of sloppy artlessness.

Midnighters, directed by Julius Ramsay. Screening tonight at CinemaSalem (9:30 p.m), Salem, MA and tomorrow night at 11:59 p.m. at Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA.

By Peg Aloi

I’ve noted a trend in indie horror cinema lately. Often the direction and visuals are really impressive, and the acting sometimes superlative. But the writing tends to be heavy-handed, or sloppy, or just not quite there. I recall seeing The Void at a special film event in Boston. The crowdfunded film had been hugely hyped. The trailer looked scary and weird and fun. The producers were on hand for a Q & A after the screening and I found myself wanting to ask why the story was so disjointed, hard to follow and ultimately unsatisfying. But before I could ask, the filmmakers (two white dudes who looked to be in their late 20s) spoke about the script, and rather breezily dismissed the idea that things had to “all fit together” in some coherent way. “We don’t like to over-explain things or give too much away,” they explained. I was perplexed. Horror already asks quite a lot of its audience, including suspension of disbelief. So it would be nice if a story had some narrative anchors dedicated to sense and logic, even if the world of the film isn’t necessarily mundane.

Do we blame The Blair Witch Project and its mostly-improvised script? No, because that scrappy little low-budget juggernaut was conceived with a very strong conceptual framework in place. Is it the fault of the Saw franchise, where the connective tissue of the story was only really strong in the beginning and at the very end, when all the random violence was finally explained and justified as a sort of revenge orgy? Or could it be the serendipitous marketability of horror franchises themselves, which audiences seem happy to keep lining up for? Or is it that the horror genre, so saturated with dreck, keeps churning out product in the hopes that a low budget jewel will be recognized for its idiosyncratic beauty or striking depth? These gems are few and far between: recent ones include The Ritual (to be reviewed by me here soon!), A Dark Song, The Witch, Goodnight Mommy, The Love Witch, The Babadook, Thelma, and The Autopsy of Jane Doe. I am sure there are excellent examples I have missed.

But mostly, indie horror seems constrained, not by lack of funds, but by lackluster creativity and a sort of sloppy artlessness. The current example of this is Midnighters, a new film by Julius and Alston Ramsay. Julius Ramsay is an Emmy-nominated director who’s helmed a number of episodes of AMC’s The Walking Dead. His brother Alston wrote the screenplay for Midnighters, his first feature film (he previously worked as a speechwriter and adviser at the White House, something that would definitely count as experience in the horror genre these days). The screenwriter has referred to his script as “a noir thriller” and his brother has called it a “gothic fairy tale,” but I must admit that, despite the fact that the film has some strengths, I think it’s a bit premature to be assigning these kinds of sub-genre designations.

The story begins with a young woman tied up in a chair, her mouth sealed with duct tape, trying in vain to scream for help. Then we cut to a New Year’s Eve party at a bar. Lindsay (Alex Essoe) is annoyed that her husband Jeff (Dylan McTee) has abandoned her during the countdown to midnight when he goes outside for a smoke. Things seem somewhat tense between them. They have a short expository conversation where we find out they’re working on a fixer upper; it’s going slowly, and Lindsay is the sole breadwinner. Driving home, while Jeff tries to lighten the mood with some sexy moves, he accidentally hits a man standing in the road. Jeff tries to revive him but Lindsay can’t call 9-11 because they’re in the middle of nowhere. The man dies. Jeff, worried about being arrested for DUI, decides that they should bring the man’s body back to their home while they figure out what to do. Lindsay is reluctant but eventually agrees: one source of tension is Jeff’s attempt to dominate Lindsay, who apparently makes him feel emasculated because she has a job and he doesn’t. They leave the corpse in the garage while they discuss matters and realize that their license plate has fallen off somewhere.

Meanwhile, Lindsay’s younger sister Hannah (Perla Haney-Jardine) arrives on the back of some young swain’s motorcycle, having also been out partying for New Year’s Eve. The lothario tries unsuccessfully to invite himself in. (Hannah talks in a mysterious tone about people being either wolves or wolves in sheep’s clothing.) He is rebuffed and drives off. When Hannah enters the house through the garage, the man, thought dead, revives and grabs her. She somehow finds a gun and shoots him and he is well and truly deceased this time around: there is blood everywhere. Hannah is hysterical, and Lindsay calms her by pulling into the shower and feeding her some sleeping pills. Then she and Jeff clean up the garage of blood and brain matter. Two police officers arrive to investigate the accident and, in an almost comical scene, refuse to acknowledge either Jeff or Lindsay’s suspicious behavior, or their contradictory versions of the evening’s events (they both insist that they hit a deer, but Lindsay identifies it as a doe and Jeff says it was a buck).

The next morning, while searching the dead man’s body, Jeff finds a slip of paper with their address on it. Hannah, who we learn has been living at the house in the wake of some personal difficulty, reveals that the dead man may have been after her because of her shady ex-boyfriend’s involvement with drug money. Lindsay then finds an old claim slip for a hotel and Jeff and Hannah are sent to investigate this. Conveniently, Lindsay is left alone at the house so that a creepily charismatic detective can arrive to question her. Smith (Ward Horton) says he is following up on some questioning about the accident; his odd behavior puts Lindsay on edge. Meanwhile Jeff and Hannah talk about what it’s like to live in Lindsay’s shadow. Given the legal jeopardy threatening these characters, it would not seem to be a good time to undermine their relationships, but Hannah’s motivations are still unclear. It soon becomes obvious Smith is not a detective at all, and that Lindsay is in danger. Horton makes this scene work beautifully, his wholesome looks and earnest manner serving as ludicrous counterpoint to his sociopathic actions. He attacks Lindsay and ties her up; we’re now seeing the film’s opening shot.

The story continues to unfold with more unlikely revelations. (The expository dialogue is clumsy; the actors do their best to make it seem natural.) More violence and some disturbingly ethical choices come along. There’s a payoff at the end that feels undeserved. I found myself confused and disappointed by the film’s implausible plot points. The acting might have been better, if the dialogue weren’t trying so hard to justify all the strange occurrences and the characters’ motivations, which are revealed when they tell us about them. They are not conveyed in a dramatically effective way.

Horror is a forgiving genre because viewers are not always in it for a good story; sometimes they just want to be scared. Click To Tweet Horror is a forgiving genre because viewers are not always in it for a good story; sometimes they just want to be scared. And there are some decent scares here (Ward Horton’s gleaming white smile may continue to haunt my dreams). But the film’s real strength is in its direction and Julius Ramsay’s skill at visual storytelling. The cinematography (by The Good Neighbor’s Alexander Alexandrov) is also artful, a fine match for Ramsay’s compositions. I’d be interested in seeing if Julius Ramsay’s film career might take off, despite this wobbly first effort. Perhaps he should put off collaborating with brother Alston — at least until the latter has a few more screenplays under his belt.

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Peg Aloi is a former film critic for The Boston Phoenix. She taught film and TV studies for ten years at Emerson College, and currently teaches at SUNY New Paltz. Her reviews also appear regularly online for The Orlando Weekly, Cinemazine, and Diabolique. Her long-running media blog “The Witching Hour” can be found at themediawitch.com.