Midnight in the Switchgrass – Lifeless Crime Thriller
Director: Randall Emmett
Writer: Alan Horsnail (Screenplay)
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Megan Fox, Bruce Willis, Lukas Haas, Caitlin Carmichael, Olive Elise Abercrombie, Lydia Hull
Plot: An FBI agent and Florida State officer team up to investigate a string of unsolved murder cases.
Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Midnight in the Switchgrass starts when a Florida State Officer Byron (Hirsch) gets news of a missing person and the news of a dead body, neither being connected. Meanwhile FBI Agents Rebecca (Fox) and Karl (Willis) are running their own operation out of a motel, one that is getting more dangerous.
As Byron and Rebecca look to work together to track down a suspect serial killer Peter (Haas), we learn how he operates when it comes to picking up women.
Thoughts on Midnight in the Switchgrass
Characters & Performances – Byron is the Florida State officer that is taking lead on the string of abduction in the area with him not getting very far in finding the person behind it, he teams up with FBI agent Rebecca as he races against time to find the killer, while trying to keep his own wife happy being left alone. Emile Hirsch does try to give us a more interesting cop figure, in what is a film filled with disappointing performances. Rebecca is running a sting operation with the FBI trying to track down sex offenders in a motel, she ends up working with Byron after scaring away her senior partner, she has the backstory to show her strength, only to just be a weakly written figure in this film. Megan Fox, much like Emile does try to make more of the character than given in the script. Peter is the married trucker that has been abducting women and torturing them, he has a routine for picking them up, believing he is doing this for the right reason. Lukas Haas is the strongest of the performances here, showing a psychotic side through the whole film. Bruce Willis plays Karl the partner of Rebecca, who decides to talk away from the case believing they are too dangerous to continue. This role really didn’t need to be Bruce Willis.
Story – The story here follows a Florida State Officer that teams up with an FBI agent as they look to track down a serial killer that has been targeting women in the area, as they look to bring an end to their reign of terror. While this is a track the serial killer movie, we do need to let the killer show their truly sadistic side, we need cops that feel like they are desperate to solve the case. The story does seem to lack any intensity behind everything happening, we needed so much more from what is going on to hit the pure intensity of the situation, instead of a lacklustre look at how things ended up going on. It has a lot of filler moments in the film too, which could have trimmed the runtime too, as it feels longer.
Themes – Midnight in the Switchgrass is a crime thriller that will bring the serial killer needing to be tracked down, it doesn’t seem to get any real investigation, just a quick chat leading to something happening, we don’t seem to go dark enough to see how twisted the killer is, with no locations being used to make any impact in the film.
Midnight in the Switchgrass is on Digital Download 13 August and DVD 16 August from Lionsgate UK
Final Thoughts – Midnight in the Switchgrass is a flat crime thriller never getting to the top level or even a strong one.
