Director, actor and writer Nicholas Michael Jacobs sent me his latest film via email, which goes live on Amazon Prime Video on March 23. Night is all about a crazed man who kidnaps women and broadcasts himself torturing and murdering them for an audience of paying viewers online.

The movie starts with three minutes of the main character, Adam Audrey, getting ready. You can barely see him and everything is in shadow. That’s followed by nearly five minutes of him following a girl and kidnapping her before the opening credits.

What follows is forty-five some odd moments of Adam taking phone calls telling him not to do this any longer, going live several times as he berates his viewers for not being creative and then taking money from them to do horrible things to the girl, then the girl talking to him in an attempt to try and reach him before they go live again.

Basically, if you want to see a guy tie a girl up to a chair, slice her with a knife and call her a bitch for nearly an hour, then Night would probably be for you. I was hoping that its long single shots would be leading up to something more. As indefensible as most people find Maniac and The New York Ripper, there are moments that aspire to art. There’s little to none of this here.

That said if you want to hear someone say, “Anybody else out there? Any more requests?” ad nauseum while a locked off shot of a girl bleeding in a chair runs, then by all means, when this comes out in a few days, you’ll have something to watch.

Even the credits take forever — over five minutes of a slow crawl — with only four people acting in the film and Nicholas Michael Jacobs name up there several times.

I get what this movie was going for, but at no moment does it hold any surprises or say anything different. I gave it the time it needed to do so and even the end isn’t so much of a twist as much of a “when are they going to get to that” moment. I hate being negative about a film, as it takes time, effort and energy to create one and I applaud everyone that worked on this for doing so.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its director, but that doesn’t impact our review.

Writer/director Adam Weber sent me a copy of his new 5-minute film, The First Date, for review.  It’s a self-funded, completely independent project inspired by films like Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil, 100 Bloody Acres and Evil Feed.

Weber was an associate producer on Terrifier, so if that movie’s graphic gore didn’t make you lose your lunch, this take on a dinner date may be right up your alley.

It’s a pretty simple premise: A man is waiting for his blind date, who is supposedly stuck in traffic. The truth, however, is pretty horrifying. I feel like if I discuss anything else that happened, I’ll give the whole story away, as it’s such a quick tale.

There are some decent FX on display here. If I had any issue with what I watched, it’s that the text conversation may have worked better as supers on the screen, thereby not getting in the way of the running time by having dissolves in between waiting for the messages. And the ending punchline could have used a little work.

That said — it’s a fun effort and I look forward to seeing what Weber does next. Thanks for sending this our way!

Disclaimer: This film was sent to the site by its writer/director. That didn’t impact our review at all. 

A passionate man makes a special promise of love and devotion to a girl who seems reluctant to accept it. He asks for 90 days to prove that she should marry him and within time, they fall in love. Yet after several weeks, real life takes over on romance and their relationship falls apart. So what happens next?

Director Michael Wong sent us this 9-minute film that he says is “inspired by a true story; it’s a story of a promise, misunderstanding and regret.” It’s a well shot movie that asks us to remember the promise of love, that when things become hard we must also recall how magical it all is that we meet that one person.

While not the usual fare that we cover on this site, this was still pretty interesting. I’m trying to keep my mind open to ideas in cinema, so watching this made me ponder my own relationships and learn how to keep my promise to them.

Want to watch it? I posted it above. Sometimes in life, things are just that simple. Also be sure to read our review and watch Michael Wong’s latest short, The Tattooist.