bayou52 Review of Heart of Midnight

Heart of Midnight (1988)

This one needs much more than a single viewing.

[8/10 · 12 October 2001]

Like another reviewer I, too, don't understand the low ratings given this film. Granted, it probably won't be everyone's cup of tea. I saw this film first soon after it came to cable and before I knew much about Jennifer Jason-Leigh or had come to appreciate the power this amazing young actress can exude in the careful and often understated nuances she brings to her craft. She was as good then as she is now. Credit should be given, also, to the set design with it's seedy candy apple red painted cinder block walls, stark bare light switches and yards of metal conduit lining long hallways off of which open rows of cribs which we come to realize housed all sorts of perversions. We learn that her uncle not only pandered to and reveled in those same perversions but was also willingly sacrificed his own life by enslavement to those same twisted desires and actions. This was a timely and bold film, also, because it dealt squarely with the oncoming invasion of the heterosexual world by AIDS at a time when most straight folk still believed themselves immune. The suspense and terror builds credibly and effectively and manages to take the worn out "damsel in the old dark house" plot and not just dress it up but actually transform it into something new and original. But, you've got to see it at least twice...once to let your head adjust to the oddness of the story and then a second time to really experience the multiple levels of terror present in this film, both real and imagined, the most palpable being that lying buried in the human soul.