‘By Night’s End’ This Couple’s House Will Be Filled With Bodies (Movie Review)
By Night’s End
Rating: 6/10
Director: Walker Whited
Writer: Sean McCane (story) and Walker Whited
Style: Thriller
Time: 85 minutes
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ9pa2zJSs4&feature=youtu.be
Review by Mike Szymanski
The making of this movie is as much of a fascinating twisting story as the actual movie. It’s a true Hollywood story.
One night. One house. One-way out.
That’s the summary of the film. The making of the movie should be: One idea. 12 days. $26,000 dollars.
Director and co-writer Walker Whited came home late one night from working as a cameraman on another shoot and heard a noise and began wondering what if someone was hiding in the house? He wrote some notes down in his bedroom and that’s eventually where the bulk of the film was shot.
He pitched the idea to friends: “What if someone was in the crawlspace searching for something right now.” His friends all jumped on board, but his girlfriend wasn’t too pleased at first that their bedroom and house would be the main set. She did eventually become his wife.
Cut to the movie-making. Whited scraped together $26,000, pulled in a lot of favors, and began shooting for 12 days in 2019 in his house. He realizes now that he could never have made such a movie in the middle of Covid.
The movie focuses on a couple, Heather and Matt who hear something in their house in the middle of the night. Heather is played by Michelle Rose who is an award-winning stuntwoman and appeared in the “Avengers” franchise as well as “Thor: Ragnarok,” and “Zombieland: Double Tap.” Mark is played by Kurt Yue from “Cobra Kai,” “Black Widow,” “The Haunting of Hill House” and “Vendetta.”
They find someone rummaging through their house who tries to attack Matt, and Heather, who turns out to be a former soldier who served in Iraq, shoots the intruder dead. It turns out though, that the true evil intruder comes later, Moody, played by Michael Aaron Milligan from “Outer Banks,” Ozark,” “24: Legacy” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”
It’s Christmas time and Matt is putting up a Charlie Brown-like tree, and asking for a steak, but you quickly realize there’s a strain between the couple, and they are having some serious money issues. They also talk about the expense of a funeral, and you find out soon that their daughter was in an accident and that Matt blames himself.
Moody, the intruder, is a comical character, laughing and giggling to himself and saying things like “Check the field, heck check every chicken’s little a — hole” when searching for the couple. He is as creepily funny as he is evil.
The couple is offered $10,000 and the question comes up about what you would do for $10 grand. The couple sometimes turn on each other as well, with the wife retorting to her husband, “You want to get screwed in the shower later, with some man in prison?”
What results is an exciting intense thriller with great momentum, a unique and new cast, and enough twists to keep the movie interesting.
The director says, “I’m extremely proud of this film as my directorial debut since it was done by a group who came together to see it through with very little funding behind it, actors who cared and put time into figuring out who their characters really are, and a crew that worked hard for 12 days knowing there was no guaranteed cash on the other end but still wanted it to look as great as it came out to be. And on top of it all, it started from a pebble of an idea.”
“By Night’s End” is available on various digital streaming platforms (Amazon, iTunes, DirecTV, FlixFling, Google Play, Vudu and AT&T).
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