Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Minutes Past Midnight Blu-ray Movie Review

Big Little Scares

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 24, 2017

Since 2011, Toronto has been home to a monthly festival of short horror films called "Little Terrors". Over five hundred shorts have been screened, with submissions from creators all over the world, ranging from industry professionals to first-time amateurs. The festival's founder and curator is Justin McConnell, whose previous feature on Blu-ray, Skull World, is one of the most memorably weird documentaries of recent years. Now McConnell has culled his favorite selections from the Little Terrors library to create a pair of anthology films, Galaxy of Horrors (coming soon) and Minutes Past Midnight (or "MPM"), newly released on Blu-ray with enough bonus shorts to supply a whole additional movie. The disc is being distributed by Canada's IndieCan Entertainment.

As McConnell explains in his portion of the disc commentary, the nine shorts constituting MPM are presented without modification, except that the credits have been consolidated and saved to the end of the feature. The only addition is a series of brief animated interstitials linking the nine shorts, plus the opening titles and end credits. No attempt has been made to invent a "framing" device in the style of Creepshow or the V/H/S franchise. The disc menu even replaces the usual "Chapter" option with the deceptively innocent invitation to "Select a Story".

MPM's nine stories reflect the diversity of voices that Little Terrors has attracted, with widely varying styles, locales and subject matters. Even the aspect ratio changes from short to short. The plots range from detailed evocations of character, place and time to one-joke quickies with an O. Henry-like twist, and the quality ranges from skillfully polished illusion to seat-of-the-pants cheesiness. The one thing you can sense in every entry is enthusiasm. As several of the directors note, short films are an exciting—and inexpensive—means for a budding filmmaker to gain experience and, just possibly, attract attention and opportunity. (By way of example, McConnell proudly notes that Christian Rivers, the creator of MPM's sixth chapter, "Feeder", has been promoted by Peter Jackson from visual effects artist to director of the upcoming Mortal Engines.)

Listed below are the nine tales that constitute MPM:

1. Never Tear Us Apart (dir. Sid Zanforlin): Two hikers headed for an unknown destination in the forest come across a broken-down shack inhabited by an unusual elderly couple.


2. Awake (dir. Francisco Sonic Kim): The young son of a distressed couple can't seem to sleep and has an unhealthy fascination with his dog's carcass. But is the boy's problem neurological, or is it something else?


3. Crazy For You (dir. James Moran): Starring Arthur Darvill of Doctor Who and DC's Legends of Tomorrow, this short concerns a serial killer who much prefers stripes to polka dots—and it's a serious preference. The killer's life is changed by love-at-first-sight. Hannah Tointon (Penny Dreadful) plays the object of the killer's affection.


4. The Mill at Calder's End (dir. Kevin McTurk): In this tale enacted by puppets, Nicholas Grimshaw fights to remove an ancient curse from his ancestral land. Jason Flemying, a familiar face in the films of Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn, voices the anguished Grimshaw, while Barbara Steele, star of Mario Bava's Black Sunday, supplies the voice of the spirit preying on Grimshaw's family. The puppet representing Grimshaw's doomed father is very obviously modeled on the late Peter Cushing.


5. Roid Rage (dir. Ryan Lightbourn): Radiation from a nuclear power plant in Florida has caused a deadly proctological mutation, prompting a police investigation by detectives who dress like Miami Vice wannabes. The acting is wooden and the makeup effects are atrociously fake, and it's often hard to tell whether the awfulness is deliberate or intentional. (From the commentary, it appears to be some of both.) Writer/director Lightbourn randomly parodies sci-fi, monster movies, second-rate action flicks and slasher movies, but his real love seems to be grossout jokes with a teenage sensibility and a toddler's fascination with bathroom activities.


6. Feeder (dir. Christian Rivers): A struggling musician moves into a rundown apartment that provides him with artistic inspiration—at a cost. As the demands of the spirit-in-residence increase, the composer finds himself combing his surroundings for animals to satisfy the spirit's bloodlust, and he becomes unexpectedly involved with several neighbors.


7. Timothy (dir. Mark Martinez Jordán): Timothy is the rabbit hero of a child's TV show that young Simon is watching when his babysitter makes him go to bed. The next thing they know, the six-foot rabbit has appeared in Simon's home, offering to play games that promptly turn deadly. Writer/director Jordán acknowledges that the story was inspired by the ominous rabbit figure in Donnie Darko, but the helmer has endowed Timothy with a loopy menace that's all his own. In Spanish, with English subtitles.


8. Ghost Train (dir. Lee Cronin): For thirty years, estranged brothers Michael and Peter have reunited for an annual memorial visit to a derelict amusement park, where something terrible happened to their boyhood friend Sam. As "Ghost Train" cuts back and forth between past and present and between the adult and childhood incarnations of its characters, it gradually becomes clear that this year's visit will be different.


9. Horrific (dir. Robert Boocheck): In a remote trailer park, a beer-swilling slob deep fries Twinkies and fights off the attack of a vicious and feral beast. Writer/director Robert Boocheck was inspired by Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films, and "Horrific" aims for a similar mixture of nervous giggles and gory shocks, succeeding only intermittently.

Minutes Past Midnight Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

All of the shorts in Minutes Past Midnight were shot digitally by different cinematographers, with a wide assortment of equipment, including DSLR cameras. Variations in video quality from short to short are presumably attributable to the source, but the video image on IndieCan Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is generally quite good, with the superior sharpness and clarity that have been digital cinema's gift to moviegoers. Color palettes vary enormously, from the dark shadows of "The Mill at Calder's End", to the faded wood and metal of "Ghost Train", to the bright arrays of stripes and polka dots in "Crazy for You". The image is generally free of artifacts or interference, and there's nothing to suggest that the shorts have been reproduced in anything less than their original quality. The average bitrate of 22.30 Mbps is typical for digitally originated material, and the encoding is capable.

Minutes Past Midnight Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

MPM arrives with a choice of three soundtracks: 5.1 in either lossless DTS-HD MA or lossy Dolby Digital, as well as a lossless 2.0 mix, also in DTS-HD MA. The advent of inexpensive audio editing software has given fledgling filmmakers the ability to produce professional-quality sound that matches the clarity of digital cinema, and all of the shorts exhibit good fidelity, broad dynamic range and clearly intelligible dialogue (even "Roid Rage", which, as its writer/director reveals in his commentary, had to have nearly all of its dialogue re-recorded). Rear-channel action is relatively restrained, but there are a few unsettling effects involving creatures rustling and rattling off-camera. A bevy of composers supplied the individual score, and the composer for Skull World, Sean Motley, provided the "anthology music" for the opening, closing and interstitials.

Minutes Past Midnight Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Filmmaker Commentary: McConnell introduces the commentary during the opening credits, then yields the floor to each director for the duration of his short. The sole exception is Christian Rivers, who was unavailable due to other commitments; McConnell supplies the commentary for Rivers' short, "Feeder", and also uses the opportunity to talk more about the Little Terrors festival and his film anthology project.
  
  The commentaries are as varied as the shorts themselves, but they are all interesting, because the directors are united in their enthusiasm for making films, developing their skills and reaching a wider audience.



• BD Exclusive—Bonus Shorts (480ip; various): A "play all" function is included.
• Through the Night (dir. Lee Cronin, 2010, 11 minutes)
• Attack of the Brainsucker (dir. Sid Zanforin, 2012 14 minutes)
• Ending the Eternal (Justin McConnell, 2008, 14 minutes)
• Testosterone Replacement Therapy (dir. Darryl Shaw, 2011, 4 minutes)
• Eviction (dir. Justin McConnell, 2012, 9 minutes)
• Orange (dir. Jay Clarke, 2012, 7 minutes)
• Cat Lover (dir. Justin McConnell, 2015, 30 seconds)
• M Is for Merman (dir. Darryl Shaw, 2013, 3 minutes)
• "Do You See What I See?" Teaser



• Greenband Trailer (1080p; 1.85:1 & 2.35:1; 1:37).



• Redband Trailer (1080p; 1.85:1 & 2.35:1; 1:41).



• Galaxy of Horrors Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 1:41): A preview of the second anthology coming later this year from McConnell and IndieCan. (This trailer also plays at startup.)



• About Little Terrors: A textual history of the Little Terrors festival.



• Event Poster Gallery (1080p): These fifty-four images provide a convenient history of the Little Terrors festival, including dates, locations and film lists.

Minutes Past Midnight Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Horror aficianados looking for the next Halloween or Hellraiser won't find it on Minutes Past Midnight, but they may well encounter a future John Carpenter or Clive Barker. The enthusiasm of McConnell and his contributors is evident throughout MPM, even if not every short achieves the effect for which its creators might have hoped. Freed from the constraints of a high-concept framing device, even one as basic as The ABCs of Death series, the creators of MPM marched to the beat of their own gory drummers wherever they might lead. Watching McConnell's anthology is as close as one can get to attending the Little Terrors festival without visiting Toronto. Then again, if you like what you see and fancy a visit to Canada, McConnell and his worldwide contributors are already preparing their next buffet of bite-size terrors. Recommended.