The Midnight After

Yep, following a second viewing I’m convinced—'The Midnight After' is pretty damn great, though there are a couple of aspects that might turn some people off. One is a potentially triggering sequence (that I'm not sure needs to be present in this much detail) and the other relates to the film's general narrative—you aren't going to get things tied up in a neat bow, so if that's your thing, this isn't the movie for you.

What you do get is a full-on, political and social allegory that presents its thesis in a rotating series of genre-specific sequences—there's sci-fi, comedy, horror, j-horror, musical, music video (!), drama, thriller, and probably a half dozen others, all punctuated with self-referential asides and in-jokes (many of which I imagine were untranslatable via subtitles).

The cast is all great, making their characters believable through all the shifts, the effects are pretty good (especially the deserted streetscapes), and the whole thing carries an aura of 'shooting for the stars' that demonstrates a real commitment to the project, such that even the open-ended conclusion works as a genuine conclusion (particularly if you are even faintly familiar with Hong Kong's semi-recent past).

Yep, following a second viewing I’m convinced—'The Midnight After' is pretty damn great, though there are a couple of aspects that might turn some people off. One is a potentially triggering sequence (that I'm not sure needs to be present in this much detail) and the other relates to the film's general narrative—you aren't going to get things tied up in a neat bow, so if that's your thing, this isn't the movie for you.

What you do get is a full-on, political and social allegory that presents its thesis in a rotating series of genre-specific sequences—there's sci-fi, comedy, horror, j-horror, musical, music video (!), drama, thriller, and probably a half dozen others, all punctuated with self-referential asides and in-jokes (many of which I imagine were untranslatable via subtitles).

The cast is all great, making their characters believable through all the shifts, the effects are pretty good (especially the deserted streetscapes), and the whole thing carries an aura of 'shooting for the stars' that demonstrates a real commitment to the project, such that even the open-ended conclusion works as a genuine conclusion (particularly if you are even faintly familiar with Hong Kong's semi-recent past).

Still working out my thoughts on this, but I wanna say that I think it is amazing.
There are prolly valid reasons for someone to dislike it (one being for the content of one scene, another related to the narrative structure) but, as a whole, it’s really pretty extraordinary.

Still working out my thoughts on this, but I wanna say that I think it is amazing.
There are prolly valid reasons for someone to dislike it (one being for the content of one scene, another related to the narrative structure) but, as a whole, it’s really pretty extraordinary.

This movie tries to be a post-apocalyptic mystery, a political allegory, and a cultural satire. However, it fails at all three. Fruit Chan shoots himself in the foot by deliberately avoiding any clear political context or plot resolutions, attempting to reach ambiguous profundity when all it really achieves is a show of gutlessness.

This movie tries to be a post-apocalyptic mystery, a political allegory, and a cultural satire. However, it fails at all three. Fruit Chan shoots himself in the foot by deliberately avoiding any clear political context or plot resolutions, attempting to reach ambiguous profundity when all it really achieves is a show of gutlessness.