Also, I saw Midnight Sun (2018) and it was pretty mediocre.
The theater was almost completely empty. I usually sit at the back of these chronic illness romance movies so I don't distract people when I take notes. So I was walking to the top when I noticed two teenage girls in the back row. When I reached the back row, they started whispering, looking alarmed. Then I realized "Oh, I'm a twenty-something year-old male walking into movie targeted at teenage girls and it looks like I'm going to sit next to two of the only teenage girls in the audience."
So I quickly went to three or four rows down.
The movie starts with a black screen and then sunlight. Getting into the themes immediately. Katie talks about Xeroderma pigmentosum with some visual aids. Just like the original Everything, Everything (2017)
Speaking of Everything, Everything (2017), the first line of dialogue is a little kid asking Katie's father whether she is a vampire.
For years, Katie has watched a boy ride past her house.
Also, someone named Megan just barges up to Katie's house, asks her father why Katie can't go out, and offers to be her friend.
This movie is an hour and forty-nine minutes and not much happens,
Katie watches the high-school graduation on television. Her father gives her a graduation card and she jokes about he is the best "math, history, Spanish teacher" she has ever had. This takes place in current year and online classes don't exist?
Later in the movie, she even refers to online classes.
Now that she has graduated, her father extends her curfew to midnight, an extra hour. I did not know that graduation affects Xeroderma pigmentosum.
Honestly, Eleven o'Clock Sun would have been a more interesting title.
For a graduation present, Katie's father gives her her dead mom's guitar. Her mom died in a car accident. Of course she did.
The guitar will become A-Major plot point.
Katie's Father: Just like you, [your mother] was hot.
First of all, don't call someone who can't go into the sun "hot". This happens throughout the movie and nobody called attention to it.
Second of all, don't call your daughter hot. There may have been more than a couple incestuous hints throughout the movie. Maybe I was just looking for them, because at least that would have made the movie interesting.
Charlie, the guy Katie watched out her window, got hurt jumping off a roof and now might not be able to get a swim team scholarship.
Katie takes the guitar to a train station and plays the song Reaching. (The Bella Thorne single available for purchase now!) The lyrics are amazing:
But lights are dim
To fulfill my destiny
I'll keep reachin' as far
As I can till break of day
I'll keep reachin' the light
Of my life will find it's way
I know if I reach too far
I may not ever recover
But I know the stars
Ain't all I'm meant
To discover.
I wrote my own version of the song.
It's not suicide
If I'm sick.
She meets Charlie coincidentally and they have the worst faux-awkward awkward dialogue. It ends with Katie telling Charlie she has to rush home for her cat's funeral. She leaves her notebook behind.
Cut to Megan at Katie's house exclaiming the stupidity of the cat funeral. Then they talk about Taylor Swift writing songs about awkward interactions with boys,
Have I mentioned that the screenwriter is male?
Megan offers to pick up Katie's notebook for her and meet at the train station, but, of course, she really contacts Charlie to meet Katie. So Katie has an impromptu date with Charlie. She calls Megan angrily because she is wearing sweatpants.
Okay, the makeup in the movie bugs me. Obviously, this movie was going to have Katie in makeup despite her XP. But it gets really distracting when she talks about how she can't ever go out in the sunlight and her face is coated in makeup. It's even more distracting here when she's complaining about sweatpants with a made-up face.
This will get worse in a few scenes.
Katie tells Charlie she is busy during the day but is free at night.
Then he invites her to a party and things get... slightly more interesting,
Morgan helps Katie get into a fancy dress and makeup and she goes downstairs,
First, the make-up is supposed to completely transform her, but she was already wearing make-up. If this movie wasn't about XP, I'd forgive it.
Yes, the most annoying thing about this movie is the make-up.
Second, her dad's reaction is another creepy incestuous hint. I kept watching using the interpretation that he was secretly lusting after his daughter and the movie took on a whole new meaning.
They go to the party, but it turns out to be completely "lame", so they go to another party.
Have to make it to the hour and forty-nine minute run time somehow.
Katie: I've only seen high-school parties in movies.
So has the screenwriter.
Charlie and Katie go to the pier and kiss. Then there's a scene where Katie tries to lie to her dad about going to Megan's when she's really going to meet Charlie. Then there's an attempt at a funny scene where Charlie and Katie's dad meet.
Midnight Sun (2018) is what happens when you take the "chronic illness romance" genre and put it on auto-pilot.
And the next obligatory thing is the pop song montage of Charlie and Katie going out together. Montages are the best way to establish chemistry between actors.
But honestly, Bella Thorne and Patrick Schwarzenegger have less chemistry than Katie's skin and the sun.
Charlie asks Katie's dad to let him take her on a "real date" and he agrees. A "real date" is going on a train to Seattle.
On the train, Charlie makes a big deal out of giving Katie some peanut M&Ms. He asks her to close her eyes and hold out her hands, and there's a too-long shot of the M&Ms wrapper. This is treated as a huge moment, like Charlie thinks Katie has never had candy before. Have to get product placement in there somewhere.
The first place they go to in Seattle is a live show at a night club. Remember that this movie is about promoting Bella Thorne's songs.
Charlie and Katie leave, go to the harbor, and strip to their underwear to go swimming.
Katie is 17 in the movie, but Bella Thorne is 20. That wasn't my problem. I thought "Should she be exposing that much skin, even at night time?" and then I remembered that this is the fantasy version of XP.
The girls behind me giggled when Patrick Schwarzenegger took off his shirt, so this movie is a hit with its target audience, despite the current 18% on Rotten Tomatoes,
They went on a train, to a night club, swimming and then lay on the harbor. How long is night?
Charlie says this exact lime:
Katie's watch has stopped because it isn't waterproof. And she has a bunch of texts from her dad telling her to get back to the house. So, she tries running home, but Charlie picks her up in his car and drives her back, leading to the funniest scene in the movie.
Everything slows down as Katie rushes to the house while the sun rises over the horizon. Attempting to make this a suspense scene works about as well as it did the last time. The sun hits her skin just as she enters the house.
Katie's dad rushes her to the hospital. Morgan tells Charlie that Katie has XP. The director actually tries to make this scene artistic- cutting from the doctor telling Katie more about XP to Charlie Googling XP. Then the doctor says he will do a test for the skin exposure to the sun. When Charlie reads a symptom, it cuts back to a clue from earlier in the movie like this is a mystery story. For example, he reads that people with XP can only go out during the night and it cuts back to Katie's line:
Also, they paid to have Google in the movie.
Some time later, the doctor shows up at Katie's house to give her father the results of the test. This is protocol? Katie watches from the window and guesses that she doesn't have much time left.
The only interesting thing about this movie is the incestuous subtext. Katie sets up her dad for an online dating site. This doesn't sound too creepy until she says that she picked the most attractive photos for him and wrote his profile.
For some reason, Katie apologizes to Charlie. Charlie gives her some speech that amounts to "You're gonna die soon, so might as well have a great summer."
Katie watches Charlie at a swim race. She wears a super-protective suit that was never established. Then he invites her to recording studio toplug Bella Thorne's latest song record one of her songs. See, Charlie stole her notebook and read the songs lyrics. Romance.
Katie admits that she has been watching Charlie ride past her window since she was small. Romance
Charlie and Katie leave, go to the harbor, and strip to their underwear to go swimming.
Katie is 17 in the movie, but Bella Thorne is 20. That wasn't my problem. I thought "Should she be exposing that much skin, even at night time?" and then I remembered that this is the fantasy version of XP.
The girls behind me giggled when Patrick Schwarzenegger took off his shirt, so this movie is a hit with its target audience, despite the current 18% on Rotten Tomatoes,
They went on a train, to a night club, swimming and then lay on the harbor. How long is night?
Charlie says this exact lime:
"Ready for the greatest sunrise on planet Earth?"
I love how Kate has found probably the only guy who would say that line and she has XP.
Everything slows down as Katie rushes to the house while the sun rises over the horizon. Attempting to make this a suspense scene works about as well as it did the last time. The sun hits her skin just as she enters the house.
Katie's dad rushes her to the hospital. Morgan tells Charlie that Katie has XP. The director actually tries to make this scene artistic- cutting from the doctor telling Katie more about XP to Charlie Googling XP. Then the doctor says he will do a test for the skin exposure to the sun. When Charlie reads a symptom, it cuts back to a clue from earlier in the movie like this is a mystery story. For example, he reads that people with XP can only go out during the night and it cuts back to Katie's line:
"But I'm free at night."
Also, they paid to have Google in the movie.
Some time later, the doctor shows up at Katie's house to give her father the results of the test. This is protocol? Katie watches from the window and guesses that she doesn't have much time left.
The only interesting thing about this movie is the incestuous subtext. Katie sets up her dad for an online dating site. This doesn't sound too creepy until she says that she picked the most attractive photos for him and wrote his profile.
"You lost Mom. You're going to lose me too."
This is like an incestuous Me Before You (2016).
Katie's father reveals that he was the one who had set Charlie up to bring the notebook to the train station instead of Megan.
For some reason, Katie apologizes to Charlie. Charlie gives her some speech that amounts to "You're gonna die soon, so might as well have a great summer."
Katie watches Charlie at a swim race. She wears a super-protective suit that was never established. Then he invites her to recording studio to
Katie admits that she has been watching Charlie ride past her window since she was small. Romance
"If I had just looked up, I could have been with you this whole time."
"You were...I love you, Charlie."
Some of the lines border on parody.
The interesting thing about Midnight Sun (2018) is that not a lot happens and then she commits suicide. And the death scene is hilarious.
She decides to go sailing and die that way. Katie is in the sailboat, covered with a hood. She takes the hood off slowly and the sun shines on her face.
Remember earlier in the film when just one ray of sunlight was devastating? Now she can be in a boat in broad daylight. I expect little consistency in idealized Hollywood diseases.
Its kind of amazing how straight they play this suicide.
They cut away to Charlie dumping her ashes so they didn't have to show her father recovering her corpse on the other side of the lake.
Charlie apologizes to Katie's dad for keeping her out late, and her dad says something like "At lease she was happy." Also, the radio plays the song Katie recorded called Walk With Me.
I wish I could walk on a star
I wish I could be where you are
They say don't you ever give up
It's so hard to be somethin' when you're not
Girls, if you want to be a pop star quickly, die young.
Charlie gets Katie's journal and reads a letter to him saying essentially "I Love You" but with a lot of sun and star imagery.
The final line is
The final line is
"Remember, I love you."
Midnight Sun (2018) is interesting. Not the film itself, but its existence. They took a 2006 Korean movie about XP that was an extended commercial for a Korean pop star and decided to remake it in America to market an American pop star.
This raises the question: Why are the mainstream releases more exploitative than the actual exploitation movies I review?
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