Dis­cov­er the ten­der romance of this back­woods mon­ster movie

A wide shot shows a grassy grove with leaf­less trees on either side, as the sound­track plays dis­cor­dant synth tones and the sounds of a detuned radio. A woman in a dress, Abby (Brea Grant), stag­gers out in the dis­tance, alone and alien­at­ed. ​“Hank?” she says. ​“Hel­lo?”

In the open­ing to After Mid­night, the scene is set for some clas­sic back­woods ter­ror. Hank (played by Jere­my Gard­ner, also the film’s writer and, with Chris­t­ian Stel­la, co-direc­tor) leaps out sud­den­ly – but then guides his girl­friend to the big old dilap­i­dat­ed house that has been in his fam­i­ly for gen­er­a­tions, where they are to cel­e­brate Abby’s birth­day with some ques­tion­able wine, music and sex.

Even if Abby express­ly refers to the place as ​“the Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre house”, and even if she asks Hank if his plan is to ​“just kill me or kill me and eat me after­wards,” his whis­pered reply as he nuz­zles up behind her (“You’ve got it back­wards: I’m going to eat you first”) sug­gests that After Mid­night may be more con­cerned with romance then hor­ror, even as it con­founds the lan­guage of both.

Their sex­u­al entan­gle­ment is inter­rupt­ed by a vio­lent cut to a scene, just short of 10 years lat­er, where Hank is beard­ed and alone in the house at night, shoot­ing through the front door at some­thing growl­ing out­side – and so hor­ror comes roar­ing back onto the agen­da. In fact, After Mid­night keeps switch­ing between Hank’s decade-long rela­tion­ship with Abby (shown in a series of flash­backs, always set dur­ing Abby’s birth­days), and his present-day iso­la­tion and belea­guer­ment by a strange crea­ture that comes only late at night and tries aggres­sive­ly to get inside.

Like the crea­ture itself, the film is a pecu­liar hybrid, com­bin­ing a couple’s love affair with mon­ster may­hem, as we try to work out simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to where (and why) exact­ly Abby has dis­ap­peared, and what the pre­cise nature of Hank’s noc­tur­nal assailant is.

It comes as lit­tle sur­prise that Aaron Moor­head and Justin Ben­son are attached to After Mid­night as pro­duc­ers, and that Ben­son plays Abby’s scep­ti­cal police­man broth­er Shane. For Moor­head and Ben­son direct­ed (and Ben­son wrote) that oth­er great recent trans­mu­ta­tion of hor­ror and romance, 2014’s Spring, in which Gard­ner had a small role.

Gard­ner and Stella’s film first appeared on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit as Some­thing Else, a title which alludes to the story’s lack of gener­ic fix­i­ty, but the title After Mid­night on which the film­mak­ers even­tu­al­ly set­tled for its release sug­gests that this might be an annex to Richard Linklater’s Before tril­o­gy. After all, if Linklater’s films track the evo­lu­tion of a couple’s rela­tion­ship over many years, from lovey-dovey begin­ning through set­tling, malaise and cri­sis, After Mid­night does exact­ly the same thing. And Gardner’s screen­play brings a nuance and sub­tle­ty to his char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Hank and Abby that is sel­dom seen in a straight hor­ror film.

Hank runs a bar in the rur­al Flori­da com­mu­ni­ty of Bar­low, but in his free time he likes to hunt. When the mon­ster starts appear­ing at his door, Hank draws on his hunt­ing skills for var­i­ous attempts to stop it dead in its tracks – but Abby also imag­ines that Hank’s sta­tus as a hunter extends to his pur­suit of oth­er women. This con­fu­sion of the vena­to­r­i­al and the vene­re­al is also evi­dent in the big buck which Hank has recent­ly killed, and whose horned head he can, now that dis­ap­prov­ing Abby is gone, remove from its hid­ing place and mount on the house’s wall. For he has giv­en to that dead buck the decid­ed­ly ama­to­ry name ​‘Valen­tine’.

The pres­ence of Valen­tine in cer­tain key scenes, with its erot­ic sobri­quet and phal­lic antlers, forges an asso­cia­tive link between the film’s twin sta­tus as love sto­ry and crea­ture fea­ture. In one extra­or­di­nary uncut, sin­gle-shot sequence, Amy tells Hank of her hopes, regrets, frus­tra­tions and dis­ap­point­ments in their rela­tion­ship. It is a deeply per­son­al scene, full of inti­mate and intense rev­e­la­tions. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, how­ev­er, it also takes place as both of them sit star­ing out the house’s open door into the night, wait­ing for the crea­ture to come, a shot gun laid in readi­ness across Hank’s lap. Their emo­tion­al apoc­a­lypse, and the monster’s advent, always seem to be run­ning par­al­lel tracks.

The Latin mon­strum from which ​‘mon­ster’ derives orig­i­nal­ly denot­ed a sign, omen or por­tent, and indeed much of After Mid­night unfolds as a hunt for the mean­ing of its own fea­tured crea­ture. Shane thinks what­ev­er has left its giant scratch­es in Hank’s front door must be a ​‘black bear’, while Hank’s best friend Wade (Hen­ry Zebrows­ki) wavers between it being a ​‘pan­ther’, or an irra­di­at­ed muta­tion of Hank’s miss­ing pet cat Dar­by, or an alien.

Hank him­self var­i­ous­ly won­ders whether it is ​“a big bad wolf try­ing to blow our house down”, or per­haps Abby her­self aggres­sive­ly seek­ing a return after leav­ing Hank (“Are you some kind of shapeshifter, Abby? Like some kind of were­wolf?”), while the recur­rent lyrics of the song play­ing on the turntable (“this one’s in your head”) as Hank busies him­self mount­ing Valentine’s head on the wall sug­gest the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the mon­ster is mere­ly a fig­ment of Hank’s frag­ile psy­che, buf­fet­ed as it is by anger, lone­li­ness and heartache.

On their very first date in the house, 10 years ear­li­er, Abby had joked about the idea that Hank took girls there to hide their bod­ies in the attic, and we are left, in Abby’s cur­rent absence, to enter­tain the pos­si­bil­i­ty that she may be mur­dered rather than miss­ing, and that the mon­ster may be her ghost, or a man­i­fes­ta­tion of Hank’s con­science, haunt­ing him with guilt and regret for what he has done.

In oth­er words, as Hank’s dif­fer­ent anniver­sary mem­o­ries fall into place, build­ing a mosa­ic-like pic­ture of a long-term, lov­ing rela­tion­ship and its grad­ual break­down, and of a cou­ple fail­ing with the pass­ing years to get mar­ried or to have chil­dren or to move on from their child­hood town, the intru­sive, ever-return­ing mon­ster proves a mul­ti­va­lent sym­bol. For it lit­er­alis­es the destruc­tion of Hank and Abby’s already crum­bling home, while embody­ing the emo­tion­al­ly vul­ner­a­ble Hank’s par­tic­u­lar sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty at night to drunk­en episodes, despair­ing night­mares and men­tal col­lapse. Or maybe, far from being a shift­ing, pol­y­semic metaphor, the mon­ster is just a monster.

No mat­ter, though, whether you read its crea­ture as fig­ured fan­ta­sy or toothy real­i­ty, After Mid­night boasts a dream team in its two leads. Jere­my Gard­ner is also the director/​star of The Bat­tery and Tex Mon­tana Will Sur­vive!, and star of Psy­chopaths, Bliss and Fin­gers, while Brea Grant is the direc­tor of 12 Hour Shift, writer/​star of Lucky and star of Beyond The Gates, Dead Night, Bad Apples.

In oth­er words, Gard­ner and Grant are two of the most excit­ing tal­ents work­ing in Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent hor­ror today – and when they bring their cre­ative chem­istry togeth­er, mix­ing in a lot of the heavy drink­ing and heav­ier karaōke so famil­iar from the indie genre scene, the result is a Frankenstein’s mon­ster, insin­u­at­ing fear while look­ing for love.

After Mid­night is avail­able on High Def­i­n­i­tion Blu-ray in a two-disc Spe­cial Edi­tion that also includes Jer­mey Gardner’s fea­ture debut The Bat­tery, from Arrow Video on 8 June.