In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007)

It’s never nice to be alone during the holidays at the end of the year. Wilson (Scoot McNairy) is not looking forward to the end of the year and wishes the year to be over as soon as possible. A friend of him convinces him to get a date on the last day of the year. He places an ad on Craigslist and it doesn’t take long for replies to appear. He decides to meet up with Vivian (Sara Simmonds). The movie follows the two during the last hours of the year and shows them meeting up and talking to each other.
As the movie has won quite a lot of awards I was looking forward to seeing. Unfortunately I wasn’t prepared for such a big disappointment.

The idea of 2 people meeting each other, walking through a town together and getting into interesting situations. It’s something that was done very well in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (which to me are the best when it comes to this type of story). In Search of a Midnight Kiss has been made on a small budget, which becomes clear very quickly as some shots the camera moves a lot or that in some scenes the sound isn’t very good. Of course this does not matter if the story is good (something like Christopher Nolan’s Following is a good example), but I really had to struggle through this hour and a half of movie. I really felt no connection at all with this film.

During the first scene of this movie I though that this might be a comedy, but there weren’t many laughs to be had. As a serious movie I didn’t like it either. According to the press kit the actors improvised a lot, something which really shows (and not in a good way). I constantly had the feeling that I was watching actors in a bad play instead of seeing two real people. Although the two do end up in interesting situations I just couldn’t relate to the way they interacted with each other.
There also is a part of the story about Wilson’s friend wanting to propose to his girlfriend, but this hasn’t been developed sufficiently, which they could have used to create some extra drama.

To me In Search of a Midnight Kiss feels like a badly created student movie. I didn’t like the acting and because of the low budget the use of the camera and sound was disappointing as well. As the movie did receive a lot of awards there are enough people that do like this movie, but it just didn’t click with me. Skip it!

Score: 3