In short: After Midnight (1989)

College students Allison (Jillian McWhirter) and her friend Cheryl (Pamela Segall) are taking part in a brand-new class about “The Psychology of Fear”. Allison does have a curious aversion to the course and its subject, yet still she goes. Their professor, one Edward Derek (Ramy Zada), is a bit of an odd duck, apparently believing that threatening a student with a gun until he wets himself, and then committing pretend suicide, is how one teaches a psychology course. To nobody’s surprise, the college’s higher ups frown upon this sort of thing, at least a little, so Derek has to go by the book from the next day on. He does, however, invite his students to come visit him at his home for a deeper exploration of his theme. For some reason (I can only suspect drugs are involved), a handful of idiots including our protagonists follow that invitation.

At Derek’s home, he incites them to tell horror stories in the vein of the least interesting urban legends, so we end up with a tale of a birthday surprise that ends in decapitation, another one of four girls getting into trouble with a rather angry guy and his dogs in the bad part of town, and one about a telephone messaging operator having to deal with a psychopath, until the framing story is wrapped up in a perfectly silly, as well as circular, manner.

As the regulars among my imaginary readers know, I, like many horror fans, do love an anthology movie, and can usually find entertainment even in the weaker ones. Case in point is After Midnight, directed by Ken and Jim Wheat, a film consisting of three and a half stories that start obvious and also finish there, made watchable by a perfectly decent cast and just as decent filmmaking. The film looks rather slick in a very typical late 80s manner. If you’re now imagining a specific look, it’s exactly that one.


One might suggest that the kind of non-supernatural horror plots it tells could have been more effective with a somewhat grimier look and feel, a bit more of the actual emotions of fear and terror. But then, this would be a more interesting kind of movie instead of the decent time waster it actually is.