Every so often, there is a film that embeds itself in your mind. This can be both a blessing and a curse as you find it circling back into your consciousness when your thoughts begin to drift. All of the emotions can come rushing back, hitting you out of nowhere and making you remember the sublime experience that tears through everything else you may have been doing. While this can be painful, in a world where many films fade from your memory as soon as you see them, it is nice to be reminded of the power that cinema can hold when you open your mind to it. In particular, once you grow used to the patterns that play out in stories, there is something alluring about the films that ask something more of you. They can become emotional epics that play out in small moments, daring you to look deeper and push past the discomfort you may feel to engage with a work more ambitious in form. That isn’t to say that works which follow predictable rhythms can’t leave an impact, but it is nice to see patterns be shaken up. When done well, it can be both purposely challenging and ultimately cathartic.
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Fitting right into this specific sweet spot is Midday Black Midnight Blue, a film whose story would sound simple if it were just stripped down to what happens. It is one of those works where then providing a plot overview almost feels like a minimizing even as it requires a grounding point. The basics are that it follows a man by the name of Ian who has experienced an immense loss that continues to haunt him. Played by Chris Stack of the recent Interview with the Vampire series, he is a shell of who he once was. Isolated in a remote home that used to be full of life, with all the joy that it can provide from music to laughter, it now feels like a prison from which he cannot escape. As we come to spend more time with him, the film gradually reveals to us that he has lost the love of his life, Liv. Played by Samantha Soule, who also wrote and directed the film with Daniel Talbott, she is a specter that Ian sees where seemingly no one else can. More than just a device to establish his past traumas, it is a way of showing how his past is beginning to swallow him whole. He does have an occasional lifeline in Liv’s sister Beth, played by Merritt Wever who previously worked with Soule on the series Godless, though that may not be enough to save him. What then unfolds is almost a horror film whose fear comes not from monsters, but from something more interior that makes it all the more terrifying. After all, as Ian begins to learn, there is no running from the dark thoughts.

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‘Midday Black Midnight Blue’ Is an Uncompromising Vision

Image via Good Deed Entertainment

Providing anything more than this overview would both do a disservice to the evocative experience the film takes you on, which is best entered into with little foresight to best let it wash you away, and would only end up sanding down all of what it explores. There is much that is unwieldy about Midday Black Midnight Blue as we discover that time is slipping through Ian’s fingers, making it unclear when something is happening or how close together events are. It is a film that is most likely nonlinear, but even that feels like it is putting too fine a point on it. What matters more than trying to make it comprehensible is giving yourself over to its fragmented way of exploring the reverberations of death. It plays out in the form of a nightmare, revealing just how warped by loss Ian has become. The small moments of respite he and we get come primarily in conversations where he speaks to Beth who fills in some gaps while leaving much still unspoken. She is herself hurting yet still tries to help Ian heal.

This is the furthest the film goes in laying out what it is that is actually happening and, while there is a risk of this revealing too much, there remains plenty of uncertainty that becomes all-consuming. Scenes between Beth and Liv are ones where we hear small recollections of their youth, though it is all filtered through Ian who is often observing what may not even be exactly how things went. Some of this is founded upon the fallibility of memory, but there is also rage brewing underneath this. What begins as an internal recollection of potential infidelity, a tragic accusation that feels built upon fear less than it is anything real, builds into the film’s standout central sequence. Set to the perfectly used “Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore)” by The Ides of March that becomes louder and louder, it serves as a bridge between a bar Ian has taken shelter in to hide from his loneliness and a nightmarish last supper of sorts playing out in his mind. As the music soon drowns everything out, it creates a feeling of madness that makes it feel like it is playing out for an agonizing eternity even if it is only a handful of minutes.

It is also at this point where, on my second viewing of the film at a festival with an audience, some were driven away by the darkness it dove into and subsequently walked out. I bring this up not because these walkouts are a reflection of the film’s quality, but more the way it comes at you. For many, this was too much as the dinner scene Ian imagines is merely the first course of how it starts to drag you further and further into depravity that it might not be able to pull you out of. This is not a criticism, but a compliment. After all, is grief not something that feels like it is impossible to escape? The way the film captures the pain that has grabbed hold of Ian is an expression of this. As he begins lashing out, at both others and himself, there is no logic to his agony. He can’t even seem to explain it to himself, growing fearful when Beth gently but firmly corrects him about a delusion that has begun to destroy him over what may have been decades. This terrifying prospect is presented without pretension or spectacle, instead playing out with an understated honesty that makes this realization hit all the harder.

It recontextualizes nearly everything that came before and how Ian locking himself away from the world allowed these nightmares to take root. It does so not to blame, but to begin to deconstruct some of how isolation can fray our tether to reality. An early scene where a character who had come to visit Ian said they were concerned about him being so far away initially played as being worried about what would happen if he got physically hurt. In retrospect, it is as much a plea for him to let others in so doesn’t not become mentally hurt as well. The film is about what happens when we are pushed to the brink of what may be oblivion and take up residence there. All of the anger that has turned to stone in Ian’s heart and mind is a result of this. The film crystallizes his interior state just enough for it to always feel like it is on the edge of shattering. It is a delicate balance to strike yet strike it Soule and Talbott do.

‘Midday Black Midnight Blue’ Is Worth Opening Your Mind To

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Running just under ninety minutes, it is a film that is well-acted, written, and directed, yet it will still not be everyone’s cup of tea by any means. This isn’t to say it has to be, as some of the boldest works out there are never going to be universally beloved, but it is worth giving a chance all the same. While we often go to the movies expecting stories with easy answers that offer narrative closure so we can step outside into the world with a sense of tranquility as opposed to tumult, there is also something to be said for leaning into the parts of being alive that will never be so easily resolved. To demand Midday Back Midnight Blue abide by convention is to futilely demand the agony of loss itself be neatly packaged. The beauty and terror of life is in how incomprehensible it can be, making any film that captures this a rare gift to be cherished. Without going into detail about where exactly Ian arrives at the end of his own agonizing journey, there could be a reading that grabs hold of a potentially hopeful thread that is itself intertwined with a much more fittingly uncertain ocean of possibilities ahead for him. Whatever one takes away from it, the final moment of melancholy it taps into is crossed with the joy of seeing a film free itself by eschewing our expectations to just be. It may leave some feeling adrift as a result, but the truth of its emotional experience would demand nothing less.

Rating: A-

MIdday Black Midnight Blue is in select theaters and on VOD now.