Last year, Bloody Disgusting broke the news that indie filmmaker Jeremy Gardner was returning to the director’s chair with Something Else, which he’d co-direct with longtime collaborator Christian Stella, who was DP on The Battery and co-director on the duo’s Tex Montana Will Survive. Now, after seeing their creature feature have its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, Cranked Up Films will release the newly titled After Midnight in limited theaters and on VOD platforms February 14, 2020. It’s the perfect horror release for Valentine’s Day and the below poster takes advantage with the tagline: “Love will rip your heart out.”
In the film, “Dealing with a girlfriend suddenly leaving is tough enough. But for Hank, heartbreak couldn’t have come at a worse time. There’s also a monster trying to break through his front door every night.”
“Hank is this small-town, good-old-boy hunter, about 10 years into a long-term relationship,” Gardner tells EW, who also premiered the poster and trailer. “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.”
Starring are Brea Grant, Henry Zebrowski, Justin Benson, Ashley Song, and Nicola Masciotra.
The film was produced by David Lawson (The Endless, Spring). Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson also produced via their Rustic Films banner. Additional producers include Arvind Harinath of Kavya Films with Venu Kunnappilly executive producing. Tiffany Boyle and Elsa Ramo are co-EPs.
In Garder’s 2013 indie The Battery, two former baseball players (Gardner and Adam Cronheim) are forced together by a zombie apocalypse and find their relationship becoming strained as they struggle to survive each day.
Here’s the official trailer for After Midnight (click the video to expand).
