Popcorn Frights 2024: ‘The Night Is Young’ Review
Stars: Sarah McGuire, Kristin Rea, Dan Daly, Kurt Hanover, Jake Jackson, Valeri Bates | Written by Patrick Rea, Sarah McGuire | Directed by Patrick Rea
Making its debut at this year’s Popcorn Frights Film Festival is The Night is Young, a found footage vampire film from Patrick Rea (They Wait in the Dark, Fused) and co-writer/star Sarah McGuire (Distortion).
The film opens with a trio of of vampire hunters, Max (Kristin Rea, Two Finns on a Fish, Belong to Us), Watts (Dan Daly; Shoe Gaze, Things That Creep Around) and Corbis (Kurt Hanover; Dimension Z, American Maniacs) readying their weapons before they head out on a mission, then goes back in time to four hours earlier. Nora (Sarah McGuire) and her brother Jake (Jake Jackson; I Am Lisa, Bloody Famous) are working on her vlog, Nora’s Infinite Gaylist, a chronicle of her attempts to find the perfect date in Kansas City’s LGBTQ community.
After a highlight reel-type sampling of the show ending with her finding someone she really liked only to be ghosted, we follow her out on her latest date. They don’t show, but Amelia (Valeri Bates; Pity I Don’t Have Perfect Pitch Too, The Exorcist: Parabellum) happens to be at the bar, and they end up hooking up. There’s just two problems. After a knife-wielding mugger grabs Nora, Amelia’s true nature is revealed when she tears his throat out. The other problem? Those vampire hunters we saw in the opening scene find his body and her purse.
While the plot may make The Night is Young sound like an action film, it’s not really. It spends as much time on the relationship between Nora and Amelia on what may be the world’s strangest first date as it does on the conflict between the two groups. That isn’t to say the film is all talk, there are action scenes, just not as many as you might expect. And due to the obviously limited budget, the same can be said of Jake Jackson’s effects, although what he does put on the screen isn’t CGI and looks good.
Although it’s billed as found footage, The Night is Young is more of a hybrid film. There’s the footage Jake shot with what might be some security camera footage mixed in, that’s fairly standard for the genre. But there’s also footage from a second filmmaker played by the director, who is documenting the hunters at work, edited in with it. That isn’t made clear until near the film’s end, but it isn’t hard to figure out either, as there’s no other way some of the footage could have been captured.
One place where The Night is Young does resemble more traditional found footage films however is the use of handheld cameras. It isn’t all shot in shaky cam, but enough of the scenes were shot while the characters were running that you may want to take an aspirin before watching if that kind of photography gives you a headache. On the plus side, the film avoids the common problem of under lit night scenes or obvious day-for-night shots that plague too many low-budget films and the cinematography, also by Jake Jackson, adds a nice bit of atmosphere to the proceedings.
Running a quick seventy-six minutes, The Night is Young is an interesting addition to the vampire genre that has more in common with a film like Morbid Colors than with more traditional bloodsucker films. It’s also one of the few films to feature a YouTuber that I didn’t want to see dead almost as soon as the story introduces them., that alone might be a reason to watch it.
***½ 3.5/5
The Night is Young screened as part of this year’s Popcorn Frights Film Festival.
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