Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Into the Dark: Midnight Kiss’ on Hulu, a Slasher Flick Set on New Year’s Eve

Hulu’s holiday-themed Blumhouse horror anthology Into the Dark continues with Midnight Kiss, the title referencing a New Year’s Eve tradition that’s also the episode’s core concept. It also exploits slasher-movie tradition: A masked killer stalks and slaughters attractive people who frequently schtup each other, although in this instance, the schhtuppers are gay men. Does this variation offer a fresh twist on the formula, or is it just more of the same bloody stuff?

INTO THE DARK: MIDNIGHT KISS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It began in 2013: Every New Year’s Eve, the same group of friends gathers for their annual celebration. By 2019, friendships are a little strained, but they soldier on. Joel (Scott Evans) gets the keys to his parents’ sprawling manse in the desert where there’s lousy cell phone service and a gun in the top desk drawer in the office, two things I mention for no reason at all, you know, just to share some detail for realism’s sake, and not because it’ll be important later. He’s bringing along his new boy-toyish fiancee, Logan (Lukas Gage), who’s joining the group for the first time. Cameron (Augustus Prew) is Joel’s ex; Zachary (Chester Lockhart) is the ultra-flamboyant diva; Hannah (Ayden Mayeri) is their hetero female friend.

Oh, right — there was another friend who chose to skip the gathering this year, therefore granting the plot an opportunity to wedge in a grisly murder in the first act. It also establishes the gimmick, where the killer leaves a mysterious typed message in an envelope for each person in the group as some kind of cryptic warning before he whips out his signature curved talon-claw sharp thing and jams it into some soft, vital body part. The killer wears an S&M mask with ears and a snout, and looks lifted from Porky Pig’s kinky torture boudior. Thus, we ponder their true identity. Is the killer just some random psychopath? Or one of the group of no-longer-best-pals who’s nursing a grudge? Hmm. Hmm, I say. Hmm.

Anyway, the plan, as usual, is for the fivesome to hit the gay dance club and party their pants off, hopefully literally. They play the midnight-kiss game, which has three rules: They gotta make out with a stranger, it’s gotta be consensual and if anything lusty subsequently occurs, they gotta ditch the stranger by sunrise. (Are you taking notes?) Joel and Logan act like they’re OK with this type of open-relationship scenario, but we have to wonder if that’s true. There’s simmering tension between Cam and Joel due to their rocky past, rooted in Joel’s tendency to be domineering. Hannah is bumming because her sexual orientation renders her alone with her thoughts when the molly wears off. And Zachary exists in the plot for some reason, possibly so there’s someone else to kill?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Honestly, take away the gay and it’s just a collection of the usual slasher-movie tropes. So take your pick of any movie in which some creepy lurker jumps out of shadows to kill people one-by-one.

Performance Worth Watching: The script works somewhat diligently to flesh out its characters before showing off their flesh and butchering their flesh. Prew and Mayeri exhibit a little platonic chemistry, earning our sympathies where other characters tend to be broad and thin.

Memorable Dialogue: “Why aren’t the cops here yet?” Hannah says, approximately three minutes after we wonder the exact same thing.

Sex and Skin: Tons of it. This movie is dude-on-dude beefcake city. Butts and barely covered frontal bulges and more butts.

Our Take: I’ll break down Midnight Kiss: Roughly 45 minutes of diligent, reasonably realistic, occasionally whiny and slightly dull character development, dotted with frequent nudity; 15 minutes of sniffing pheromones and things getting out of hand at da club; 24 minutes of hyperventilating, sweating, struggling, shrieking or bloodletting, or any combinations thereof; 90 seconds addressing the psychological struggles of gay men; two minutes of credits. Of the handful of kills, one is especially gruesome, while others won’t satisfy the bloodlust of horror mavens craving more innovative depictions of maniacal homicide. Another shower slaying? YAWN.

Of course, it all boils down to who will survive and how, and who the killer is and why, and it’s all rather predictable in spite of its various teasings and a red herring or two. The movie is well-made but creatively uninspired, rendering it yet another slasher flick with a few nifty shots. It’s mostly serious; it’s mostly not fun. I shrug emphatically.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Midnight Kiss achieves a level of mediocrity rendering it thoroughly unspecial. It isn’t the worst Into the Dark outing, but it’s far from the best.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Into The Dark: Midnight Kiss on Hulu