After Midnight trailer screen shot
Cranked Up Films

Indie director Jeremy Gardner is back, having written, co-directed, and starred in ‘After Midnight’, a thriller about a “good ol’ boy” whose partner leaves him, only for him to find his house besieged by an unseen monster every night.  Gardner made an impression with his 2012 film debut ‘The Battery’, and it looks as though ‘After Midnight’ is another low-budget frightener that will deliver the requisite scares.

Gardner spoke to EW about his upcoming picture, saying:

“Hank is this small-town, good-old-boy hunter, about 10 years into a long-term relationship.  He wakes up one morning and his partner, Abby, has just gone, [leaving] just a very cryptic note. Around the same time she leaves, something starts coming out of the swamp at night and scratching at the door and trying to get in. You don’t know if he’s losing his mind, because he doesn’t know where she is, he doesn’t know what this thing is, people don’t believe him. So it’s kind of a creature-feature romance.”

‘After Midnight’ was co-directed by Gardner’s ‘The Battery’ cinematographer Christian Stella, who added:

“We like to make movies that focus on characters.  I’m a romantic at heart, so this movie’s a romance first and a monster movie second. It’s kind of the perfect date movie, actually. You get the romance and then you get the monster.”

Brea Grant (‘Eastsiders’) co-stars as Hank’s lover Abby, with Justin Benson as Abby’s brother, the local sheriff.  The cast also includes Ashley Song, Nicola Masciotra, Keith Arbuthnot, and Henry Zebrowski.

Watch the trailer below:

 

Regarding the character of Abby, Gardner said:

“Brea’s Abby is really the heart and soul of the movie.  You’re in it from Hank’s perspective, [but] there’s a moment where she really gets to have her say. It was a very long, 14-minute monologue. We reached out to a couple of other actresses during the casting process and they all sent back just a couple of clips. We reached out to Brea and she did the whole monologue. She was like, ‘If you’re going to make me audition, I’m going to show you that I can do something.’ When we saw that, we were totally sold.”

Cranked Up Films

Here is the film’s poster:

Cranked Up Films

‘After Midnight’ will be released in select theaters and on-demand on February 14, 2020.