Released in 2019

Night

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A dark shady character whose face is never revealed, trawls the streets at dusk for unsuspecting young girls on their own. He kidnaps them, takes them back to a closed in space in front of a camera. Here he takes bids for what he will do the poor girl on screen, for ‘donations’ paid to him online. What then unfolds is a series of unpleasant torturings for the girls, for the benefit of his online watchers.

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With such a well-worn, narrow concept, excellent acting and script are needed to create atmosphere and build dialog between the perpetrator and the victim. This normally engages the audience and we find ourselves ‘rooting’ for the tortured, wondering how they will escape, will they escape, or, ‘by God and thunder, how will that depraved Perp get his just deserts’. However, this is no claustrophobic tour de force like, ’10 Cloverfield Lane’.

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There’s nothing to really ‘hook’ an audience with, no proper script, no real acting, not even a camera plan. Shot from one angle, it’s so low lit that far from creating atmosphere, all the audience gets is black shadows. The result is sadly, far from a thriller which is what ‘Night’ is billed as. What is in fact a stab at a slasher/psycho thriller is instead, flat and uninteresting.

 

Fair play that the film makers clearly wanted to make a film, which is time consuming but, with one person doing most of the work, namely the director, ‘Nicholas Michael Jacobs,’ who also acts, produces, writes, edits and wields the camera, there’s simply too much subjectivity. Non-existent make up effects, (err… It’s slasher movie), zero lighting and sound, all of which cost peanuts at this budget level to sort out, and the audience is left wondering, do the film makers actually care?

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There are glimmers of a talent for producing peaking out, and a grasp of concept, but let’s hope this film was very much a first learning experience. If so things can only get better. ‘Night’ is also lacking in humour, which is a sin in any film, because guess what? Film is about entertainment.  

 

Watch if you want to learn how not to make a film.

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