Directed by Erik Bloomquist
Written by Erik Bloomquist, Carson Bloomquist
Starring Caroline Williams, Nicole Kang, Nicholas Tucci
Unrated
Available on DVD and VOD on June 22

by Anthony Glassman, Contributor

Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Somewhere, lurking in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind, there is some analogy between families and creative types, perhaps that they are like unhappy families in their dissimilarities to each other.

However, the reality is I just wanted to bust out that Tolstoy quote, because it amuses me.

The point remains, however, that there is a vast difference between the way different creators approach their work, and more importantly, there are vast gulfs of metaphorical space between the ways they can succeed and fail at their chosen tasks. Morrissey, for instance, is arguably creative and inarguably successful, especially when he only opens his mouth to sing, but he has, for all intents and purposes, put out the same album over and over again since the Smiths broke up. AC/DC has two songs, and every single album of theirs is filled with variations on those two songs.

David Bowie or the Eurythmics, on the other hand, changed fairly radically between each and every album they released. “John, I’m Only Dancing” does not sound like it comes from the same mouth as “I’m Afraid of Americans,” and the soundtrack for 1984 could easily have been a compilation of three or four different bands.

None of which directly has anything to do with Erik Bloomquist’s Ten Minutes to Midnight, except for the musical connection of it being set in a radio station, on what will turn out to be the final night of a successful, but aging, DJ’s career.

Caroline Williams, perhaps the only actor to appear in films by both Louis Malle and Tobe Hooper, plays Amy Marlowe, a late-night DJ coming in to work on what she will discover is her last night on the air. She doesn’t know that sleazy station manager Robert (William Youmans) plans to replace her with Sienna (Nicole Kang from Batwoman, an oddly ironic choice), a young ingenue who he presents to Amy as an intern who will be shadowing her.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Amy was bitten by something on her way into the station in the middle of a hurricane. She isn’t sure what, but it was flying and it had teeth, so the safe guess is a bat.

As the realization of her impending professional doom dawns on her, other changes are happening, perhaps turning Amy into a vampire. Or she could be going crazy. Or Erik Bloomquist, who co-wrote the film with Carson Bloomquist, who I’m assuming is his brother, just tried to jam a decade’s worth of different films into one. 

In the beginning, we are presented with what looks like a fairly normal vampire tale. Then Amy goes wonky and suddenly Youmans is playing Sienna and Kang is playing Robert, while the engineer and security guard have also switched parts. Seeing Nicole Kang playing a middle-aged sleazeball and William Youmans playing a 20-something girl, with neither of them undergoing make-up effects, just wearing appropriate outfits, is bizarre, to say the least.

At the end of the day, is it a vampire film at all, or a parable about careers stealing the life from us and then replacing us with the next willing victim? Who the hell knows? It’s like the Bloomquist brothers wanted to make three or four different films, but only got enough funding for one and said, “Fuck it, let’s toss it all in!”

Perhaps most frustratingly about it all, everyone in the film is damned good. Everyone is absolutely enjoyable in their roles, the direction is solid, it’s just that overall, Ten Minutes to Midnight can’t quite decide what it is.