Midnight in the Switchgrass: Blu-Ray Review

Longtime producer Randall Emmett (The Irishman, Escape Plan, The Wicker Man) makes his feature film directorial debut with the crime-thriller, Midnight in the Switchgrass, starring Emile Hirsch, Megan Fox, Lukas Haas and Bruce Willis. That is a pretty solid cast and with the film being based on a true story, this had the makings of being at the very least, a serviceable thriller. Unfortunately, there isn’t much worth recommending.

Although based on a real-life Texas serial killer, Midnight in the Switchgrass takes place in a small Florida town. Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent Byron Crawford (Hirsch) has spent years trying to track down a serial killer (Haas), who has been abducting young women and locking them up in his storage shed, without the knowledge of his wife or daughter. While trying to take down a sex-trafficking ring, FBI agents Karl Helter (Willis) and Rebecca Lombardi (Fox) stumble upon the serial killer’s work. They partner up with Crawford to help discover the identity of the killer and take him down.

Midnight in the Switchgrass has been getting most of its’ publicity from the scenes taking place between Fox and her real-life boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly who plays a pimp. There is nothing appealing about their scenes together and the same can be said about almost anything else in the film. I will give credit to Haas who makes for a pretty good psychopath, but he has always been a good actor, and the stranger characters are, the better his performance becomes.  In the end, this is a paint-by-numbers thriller that Is filled with too many poorly written characters and not nearly enough thrills.

By: Marc Ferman