Into The Dark S2E4: Midnight Kiss; LGBT New Years Eve Horror

While this is certainly the best LGBT horror television episode based around New Years Eve, that’s the only thing it’s best at. While it was interesting to see LGBT characters dominating a piece of horror media, and while there should be more of that going on, that doesn’t glorify the negative aspects of the episode, which are aplenty.

That isn’t, of course, to say that this episode was devoid of any value. Overall, the set, costume, and makeup design for this episode were brilliant. While there were a few flaws here and there, it really worked. The production value was incredible, and you could tell they took full advantage of the budget they were given, as they focus on mainly two places, and do those two places incredibly well, instead of having a large amount of sets and making them all mediocre.

One of the first of many flaws of this episode, however, was the miserably slow pacing. For an episode that was an hour and a half long, not much really happened. A lot of the episode was filled with unnecessarily drawn out scenes that would’ve worked better if they were half the length. It also didn’t help that a lot of the scenes were fairly repetitive; every single scene feeling like it had been done twice. There were very common images, like the overly prevalent scenes of nudity and characters getting prepared to do something, which greatly trumped the scarier moments of the series, unfortunately. While there was some amount of development going on during these scenes, oftentimes there were a lot of details that weren’t important, which was common throughout the episode.

There were some features about the characters that weren’t necessary to the plot, made worse by the fact that the characters weren’t well developed overall. For example, one of the men, Cam, has an active Grindr profile. This is mentioned once in a scene where the characters talk about Cam’s Grindr account for several minutes. While important for those minutes, it’s not important for the rest of the story. Part of the problem is that you think a detail like the Grindr account is important, and so when it’s not, you’re left mildly confused as to why it’s included in the first place.

The insignificant details, of course, were worsened by the lack of character development. There were five different characters, and none of them were well developed. You could get glimpses of all of them and what they were like, but you never really saw any of their struggles or felt for them. You never actually fully delved into them at great length, only getting brief glimpses into their personalities. While this works for some of the minor characters in the narrative, it’s hard to care about any of them, especially when they’re dying. As a result, all of the scarier scenes, which are scarce, are less scary.

Furthermore, as far as the actual killer went, they were incredibly underwhelming. They wore a leather dog face S&M mask, which, while it did fit the tone of the piece, could’ve been more terrifying. For a man in a latex suit, it looked more like a somewhat in shape man was wearing it, and, as a result, you didn’t really fear the villain. Also, the villain’s reveal wasn’t particularly shocking. While it wasn’t the least possible shocking conclusion to the narrative, it didn’t really hit you with any surprise as to who it was.

Furthermore, the villain’s actual reasoning for his actions seemed unrealistic. While most villains have reasoning that is in some way flawed, they have mindsets that could be perceived as realistic. That’s why we fear them, as people with those mindsets could reasonably exist, and could be out to get us, thus fear is developed. This villain didn’t have a reasonable mindset, and thus you don’t believe that he could reasonably exist. The next part is a spoiler, so if you don’t want spoilers, skip to the next paragraph. The killer’s reasoning as to why he kills the friend group is that his first kiss, before he had come out as gay, kissed one of them during New Years Eve, and then that group member forgot about him, obviously. Because it was so special to him, he kills them all in order to force them to remember him. Of course, I’m not a gay man, and so I only know so much about that particular experience, but I assume that the experience of kissing a man at a gay club wouldn’t cause you to go out on a rampage to try and find him, even if you were incredibly mentally ill. Therefore, his desire to kill this entire friend group is unrealistic.

Furthermore, there’s one particular subplot that is of note. This paragraph does contain spoilers, so if you don’t want spoilers, skip to the next paragraph. One of the gay men, Joel, kills a man. While there is reasoning for it, it’s not good enough reasoning for it to make sense. Basically, Joel kills his ex-lover’s hook-up. While Joel isn’t described as a particularly likable character, having him kill someone felt out of place. He’s described as controlling, but not as violent; there’s no implication that he is at all, and so his actions aren’t justified. Furthermore, there’s really no need for this to be added, except to add time.

Furthermore, the overall message of the piece is confusing. It appears to be about how toxic the friend group is to each other except they never go into full detail as to why it’s so terrible. Sure, they seem to be irritated by each other at certain points, but that’s how all friends are, and so while it’s evident the creators were trying to portray their friend group as toxic, there isn’t a ton of genuinely toxic behavior that occurs between them.