Review by Indra Wignall

Midnight Son follows Jacob Grey (Zak Kilberg), a troubled young man with an unusual life. At the age of twelve Jacob received a severe burn to his arm, not from fire or boiling water, but from sunlight. Since then he has stayed out of the sun and lived his life in the shadows of the night, but now his life is changing again.

An insatiable hunger has gripped Jacob and nothing but butcher's shop blood can stop the aching in his stomach. This isn't much of a problem for the solitary Jacob until he meets Mary (Maya Parish) and accidentally tastes her blood one night in the heat of passion. Now, the butcher's blood can't stop the hunger and Jacob has to turn to a hospital orderly with loose morals to supply him with packets of human blood from the hospital waste bin. The orderly appears to simply be out to make a bit of money from someone he assumes has an odd fetish, but gets increasingly darker as the film pans out. He adds violence and chaos to the lives of those around him and leaves Jacob with some difficult decision to make.

Essentially a vampire film, Midnight Son, written and directed by Scott Leberech, moves away from the romanticised ideals of the popular genre and asks what it would really be like to live this life. Rather than smouldering romance and a heady lifestyle, Jacob's life is more that of an addict and this is mirrored well in Mary and her cocaine habit. The story slowly escalates from the single lonely man, through fighting addiction to becoming a killer, no longer on his own. The character is well written and, even though Jacob is committing murder, you can still empathise with him and feel the conflicting emotions of the character.

In a predominately dark film, colour is used as a motif to highlight certain moments and emotions. The scenes in when Jacob is caught in blood-lust are subtly accented with crimson objects, such as a handbag, in an otherwise muted backdrop. The sunsets painted by Jacob show his longing for his old life and also play on the often used theme of vampires longing to stand in the sun once more. They could also show something of an irony here, the sun that took his life from him, could bring it back and possibly make it better than ever before, with a gallery offer to pay high prices for them. Moments such as these certainly show that big budgets and amazing technical effects are not needed to add depth and thought to a film. After a couple of slow patches in the first half of the film it slowly builds to its crescendo. The film ends on a moral cliffhanger and it would certainly be interesting to see how this played out in a sequel. Midnight Son is a film for those who like their vampires without sparkles and their plotlines a little more gritty.

Midnight Son is released on DVD and Blu Ray on Feburary 11th 2013.