Midnight in the Switchgrass (dir. Randall Emmett, 2021) — Review

In a news cycle dominated by the Bennifer recoupling, one plausible explanation for Midnight in the Switchgrass is that of an elaborate industry scheme to knock off the ‘A-list romance on an atrocious film’ arc which has proved so lucrative in recent months. Little else could rationalise the sheer self-sabotage and almost masochistic humiliation, not only of Randall Emmett's debut as a director, but of Bruce Willis's latest dive into the depths of straight-to-VOD purgatory. Midnight in the Switchgrass might be just about excusable as a lazy paycheck for Willis, and a barn-storming PR grab for Megan Fox, who has emerged from a decade of dormancy to summer ubiquity like some kind of post-feminist cicada. Alas, the final egregious detail of the movie — its 'based on a true story' tagline — pushes it over the edge into truly incomprehensible territory: despite a few strong performances, and the decently grisly premise of Texas's real-life Truck Stop Killer, Midnight in the Switchgrass dooms itself to the status of talking point on a few E! red carpet interviews.

This is an outstandingly limp film. Just as the real-life romance which it spawned between ‘stars’ Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly, aka Colson Baker, is several letter-grades down from Gigli-era Ben and Jen, Midnight in the Switchgrass is B-level in every respect, including its inability to commit to being truly bad. Fox and Willis star as FBI agents Lombardi and Helter, who team up with state police officer Byron Crawford (Emile Hirsch) to sting a suspected serial killer. Naturally the sting goes wrong, plunging Lombardi into danger and her companions into a race against time to save her. But it is a slow, slow race. Lombardi's male colleagues constantly reiterate the point that 'time's running out', as though to convince themselves as much as the audience that every one of the film's hundred-odd minutes doesn't feel agonisingly protracted, due to some combination of hackneyed plot point, clunky dialogue, or waxwork-level acting.

The audience are treated to insights into Megan Fox's new life as newfound feminist icon slash headline-grabbing pop punk WAG in scenes with her new beau, who plays a sleazy john convincingly enough due to his resemblance to a tattooed naked mole rat. Even beyond the rich trove of sensual, nuanced dialogue between this star couple — 'Lift up that skirt.' | 'No.' — it's left to Fox to shoulder the unenviable dramatic burden of making a film which is both outstandingly exploitative and lazy into something verging on watchable. No help from Willis on that front: he delivers lines such as 'we're the FBI' with all the energy and conviction of a parent roped into their offspring's iMovie project.

Faced with the options of crafting a coherent procedural, or getting Megan Fox to writhe around in sexy but totally implausible scenarios, the filmmakers repeatedly pick the latter, only to attempt to pull some cerebral plot-twists from the flaming wreckage of a story near the end. This refusal to commit even to its own vacuity is the final nail in the movie's coffin: a disinterested mess that hems and haws around everything from a slow-burning psychological thriller to blatant sexploitation to meditation on rural America, and does nothing well. 'Nobody's ever stood up for those girls,' laments Crawford of the victims whose deaths have been sloppily pantomimed in the exposition. Despite Fox's efforts to do just that by at least committing to her role, her input fails to counterbalance the overall tone of a film which lacks either artistic merit, cheap thrills, or any kind of emotional interest in the murdered girls.

Áine Kennedy is a London-based writer and manager of the ScriptUp blog.