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At night, when many of us are sleeping, things take on a different tone. Instead of businessmen hustling to meetings or moms picking their kids up from school, it’s a world of late-night revelers, late shift workers, and those who are just passing by. And in Midnight in the Switchgrass, a law enforcement team sets out to solve some of the crimes that take place after dark.
Midnight in the Switchgrass investigates a growing number of unsolved murders in Florida with state officer Byron Crawford (Emile Hirsch) and FBI agent Rebecca Lombardi (Megan Fox). More and more troubled young women are going missing—and later found murdered—and while some people are quick to overlook their deaths, Crawford refuses to forget them. So he teams up with Lombardi, who’s spent months trying to lure the killer and isn’t ready to give up. With a teenage girl missing—most likely the killer’s next victim—they ignore their superiors’ orders and continue the operation.
As Agent Lombardi closes in on the killer, the tension builds. She’s confident that she’ll be able to stop him—to keep him from hurting anyone else. But, of course, things never go as planned in the movies—and she and Crawford end up in a race against time.
At the heart of the story is a chilling look at the men who target the seemingly invisible ones—the troubled teenage runaways, the women who take to the streets to make a living. They’re easy targets because few people will notice they’re gone—and even fewer will miss them. Even the police tend to look the other way—to spend their time on more important cases. But there are some—like Crawford and Lombardi—who refuse to let these women be forgotten.
The problem, however, is that this eerie tale isn’t especially well told. It’s loaded with holes and annoying flashback sequences, and the acting is often laughably over-the-top. One might expect more from a film that includes stars like Bruce Willis, Emile Hirsch, Lukas Haas, and even Megan Fox—that the list of familiar names would give it more than just a little extra recognition. But the storytelling doesn’t live up to the names on the cast list.
Midnight in the Switchgrass offers some interesting possibilities: a dark, suspenseful story, a likable cast. But while it’s definitely dark and haunting, that isn’t necessarily enough to make it worth seeking out.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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