A Slasher Lost in the Lobby

Read Time:6 Minute, 29 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Matinee (aka Midnight Matinee) (Kino Cult #51) (Blu-ray)
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Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Year Released: 1989, 2026 Kino Cult Blu-ray
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Richard Martin
Writer: Richard Martin
Cast: Ron White, Gillian Barber, Jeff Schultz, Beatrice Boepple, Timothy Webber, Don S. Davis, R. Nelson Brown, Matt Hill, William B. Davis, Stephen E. Miller, Kerry Sandomirsky
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.kinolorber.com or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: A murder in a movie theater should be one of the easiest horror setups in cinematic history. The dark room, the distracted crowd, the screams coming from the screen, the real danger hiding inside the fake one. MATINEE, also known as MIDNIGHT MATINEE, begins with exactly the kind of promise that has you on the edge of your seat. Richard Martin’s Canadian horror-mystery opens with a grisly killing during a horror film festival, then jumps ahead two years as the same small-town theater prepares to reopen for another round of genre programming. The past hasn’t healed. The killer hasn’t been caught. The seats are filling up again.

That’s a terrific hook, and it’s easy to see why Kino Lorber would rescue MATINEE for a new Kino Cult release. The film has the right ingredients for rediscovery! A theater-set murder mystery, a movie-within-a-movie structure, a genre pedigree, familiar faces from cult television and horror-adjacent corners, and a title history complicated by Joe Dante’s unrelated 1993 MATINEE. It’s the kind of film that sounds better the more you describe it. Watching it is a more uneven experience.

The film’s opening is its strongest. It plays with the audience’s awareness of horror, using the on-screen slasher film to blur the difference between staged violence and actual murder. There’s a thrill in seeing a fake movie death echoed by a real one, and for a while, MATINEE seems ready to become an exercise in theater paranoia. You can feel the possibility of a film obsessed with spectatorship, genre fandom, and the communal charge of watching horror with a crowd.

Instead, the movie settles into something muted, more talkative, and far less urgent. After the early killing, MATINEE becomes less of a slasher than a small-town whodunit wrapped in slasher packaging. That’s not exactly a problem. A murder mystery set around a horror festival could absolutely work, especially with a community full of resentment and suspicion. The issue is that the film doesn’t make those suspicions consistent. It introduces a crowded field of possible culprits, but too few of them carry enough personality, menace, or emotion to make the guessing game as fun as it should be.

Ron White plays Al Jason, the hard-edged cop trying to keep control as the town’s buried fears start resurfacing. White gives the film a leading presence, even when Al himself feels more like an outline than a fully developed person. His weariness fits the setting's grizzled, damp atmosphere, and the film derives some value from his friction with local personalities. At the same time, the character’s investigative path rarely has the urgency needed to carry the movie through its stretches between murders.

Gillian Barber, Jeff Schultz, and Beatrice Boepple help give the film some interpersonal texture, with Boepple standing out for the alertness the film could’ve used more often. Don S. Davis and William B. Davis add instant appeal, particularly for viewers who enjoy spotting familiar character actors before or around their better-known work. Timothy Webber also gives the film a little sleazy energy as a reporter sniffing around the tragedy. The cast is stronger than the material often allows, which makes the film’s flat stretches more frustrating.

Martin’s direction has moments of clear visual interest. The theater setting gives him room to play with screens, shadows, hallways, projection booths, and the separation between the crowd’s attention and the danger moving around them. The film occasionally finds striking images in that contrast, especially when movie violence and real violence begin to overlap. There are flashes where MATINEE feels like it knows exactly what kind of cult object it wants to be.

There’s a specific pleasure in watching an obscure Canadian genre film that doesn’t quite behave like its American cousins. It has an odd, chilly regional quality and an interest in eccentric side characters that makes it feel distinct even when it’s not especially effective. The film’s awkwardness becomes part of its identity. It isn’t reduced to anonymity, and that gives it more personality than some cleaner, emptier late-era slashers.

The new Kino Cult release also makes sense because MATINEE is exactly the kind of film physical media labels help reframe. It’s being rescued because genre history is full of strange titles that tell us something about what filmmakers were trying to do, what audiences expected, and what happened when a commercial horror idea was toward something moodier and less straightforward.

The biggest disappointment is how much more dangerous the film sounds than it feels. A reopened theater. An unsolved murder. A horror festival. Red herrings everywhere. A killer stalking the space between screen fantasy and real death. Those elements should create a tightening sense of dread, but the movie rarely turns the screw. It lets the curtain rise, then spends too much time in the lobby.

For slasher completists and collectors who enjoy finding the strange corners of late-80s horror, MATINEE has value. The cast is worth seeing, the premise has charm, and the theater setting gives the film built-in appeal for anyone who loves horror. It’s also a fun title to finally have available in a more accessible edition, especially with commentary that helps place it within a broader cult context.

MATINEE has a strong opening, a few inspired images, and enough oddball DNA to keep it from being a waste, but it never becomes the movie its premise promises. It’s a curious relic rather than a lost gem, a film best approached with patience, lowered expectations, and an interest in the paths horror almost took. The screen is ready, the seats are full, and the killer is somewhere nearby. The movie just takes too long to make that feel as fun as it should.

Product Extras:
Audio Commentary by Film Historians Jason Pichonsky and Paul Corupe
Theatrical Trailer

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[photo courtesy of KINO LORBER, KINO CULT]

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