In the sci-fi thriller MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, a father goes on the run to protect his young son and uncover the truth behind the boy’s special powers.
What starts as a race from religious extremists and local law enforcement quickly escalates to a nationwide manhunt involving the highest levels of the Federal Government. Ultimately his father risks everything to protect Alton and help fulfill a destiny that could change the world forever, in this genre–defying film as supernatural as it is intimately human.
Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
Then join comedian Kevin Maher as he explores some of the strangest depictions of pop culture’s greatest villain: Lucifer. It’s a two-hour video variety show filled with Satanic Panic, Deals with the Devil and Satanimation in 80’s cartoons.
Co-hosted by returning favorites:
Tenebrous Kate (writer & illustrator, HERETICAL SEXTS, SLUTIST and HEATHEN HARVEST)
Paul Murphy (filmmaker, RED OBSESSION)
Plus special guests:
Lucien Greaves (co-founder of The Satanic Temple)
Landis Darling (burlesque performer)
Starring: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy
Edgar Wright’s dark-romantic-comedy Shaun of the Dead is a lively contemporary contribution to the zombie genre with its comment on society’s preoccupation with being, well, preoccupied. Two thirty-something losers, Shaun and Ed, don’t notice the signs that a zombie outbreak has hit London until one (their roommate) walks into the living room. For the first time in their lives, the slackers take some initiative by rescuing friends and family while Shaun also tries to prove to his estranged girlfriend he has more than just a desire to sit at the pub all day. A trope of zombie films is that the living dead and the living return to the places most familiar so you know where this ends…with a pint!
A London reporter has the scoop on the end of the world in the British science-fiction classic THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE.
Peter Stenning is a depressed British reporter who gets by with the help of his friend, veteran journalist Bill Maguire. Along with weather forecaster Jeannie Craig, they discover that the simultaneous nuclear explosions set off by the United States and Russia have drastically altered the earth’s rotation. Fires and earthquakes ravage cities all over the world, and chaos and sickness descend upon the frightened survivors as they try to put the planet back on its axis. Directed and co-written by Val Guest (The Quatermass Experiment), The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a clever work of speculative fiction that, like the other films in our series, reveals a terrifyingly real post-apocalyptic existence.
Part of Nitehawk’s May THE WASTE LAND brunch and midnite series.
Starring: Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Caine
In 2027 women have inexplicably become infertile and the world is in a steady, chaotic decline. Set in London, Children of Men shows the grittiness and violence that emerges from society knowing there isn’t a future. In this realistic imagining of the world’s end, all hope seems to be lost. But, eighteen years since the last baby was born, a disillusioned bureaucrat becomes an unlikely champion of the human race when he is asked by his former lover to escort a young pregnant woman out of England as quickly as possible. In a thrilling race against time, he will risk everything to deliver the miracle the whole world has been waiting for…new life.
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Noah Huntley, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson
An experiment in anger unleashes a deadly rage on London after an infected chimpanzee escapes its medical lab. 28 day later, a bike messenger named Jim wakes up from a coma alone in a hospital and enters a deserted post-apocalyptic England. He meets a group of survivors and joins them in the perilous search of a safe place to live while also trying to adjust to how the world has drastically changed. 28 Days Later ushered in a zombie film into the twentieth century and even though Danny Boyle states that the film is not about zombies, the film’s allegorical narrative comments on society, trust, and the tenuous balance between order and chaos as much as the work of George A. Romero.
London turns into a wasteland of objects after the bomb in Richard Lester’s THE BED SITTING ROOM. Presented in 35mm!
Richard Lester’s surrealist farce The Bed Sitting Room is unlike any other post-apocalyptic film you’ll ever experience. Showing a landscape of a post-nuclear UK, the film focuses on the remaining few people surviving strangely in London after the shortest war in history. Resorting to the old ways – riding the Tube, making BBC broadcasts, producing electricity, maintaining the monarch – looks more like a foreign future rather than a familiar past. And in their ever-changing world there becomes one unexpected more shift…some of them start turning into objects and animals! A mixture of Buñuel and Monty Python, The Bed Sitting Room is sincerely as funny and strange as the end of the world can get.
Part of Nitehawk’s May THE WASTE LAND brunch and midnite series.
Cross over the border into the wasteland of Scotland where a viral outbreak ushers in the dark age of DOOMSDAY.
In 2008 a viral outbreak called the Reaper Virus hit Scotland so badly that the country was quarantined off from neighboring England. Twenty-five years later, Eden Sinclair, who was one of the last to escape as a little girl, leads a team back into the hot zone to find the counteragent because the virus has re-emerged in London. Wandering through the wasteland of a once familiar Scotland, they discover that contamination is the least of the worries. Glasgow is now home to a clan of feral survivors whom Eden and her team battle to survive. A little Mad Max, a little 28 Days Later, Doomsday goes in some surprisingly violent, gory, and humorous directions as it deals with class structures, border control, and human nature.
Part of Nitehawk’s May THE WASTE LAND brunch and midnite series.
Nitehawk honors the life of Phife Dawg with special midnite screenings of Michael Rapaport’s documentary BEATS, RHYMES & LIFE: THE TRAVELS OF A TRIBE CALLED QUEST.
Having forged a 20-year run as one of the most innovative and influential hip hop bands of all time, the Queens NY collective known as A TRIBE CALLED QUEST have kept a generation hungry for more of their groundbreaking music since their much publicized breakup in 1998. Acclaimed actor Michael Rapaport documents the inner workings and behind the scenes drama that follows the band to this day, and explores what’s next for what many claim are the pioneers of alternative rap in his feature directorial debut, BEATS RHYMES & LIFE: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest.
Nitehawk presents a special screening of FAULTS featuring an introduction by director Riley Stearns and a Q&A with Stearns and lead actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is under the grip of a mysterious cult called Faults. Desperate to be reunited with their daughter, Claire’s parents set out to recruit Ansel Roth (Leland Orser), one of the world’s foremost authorities on cults and mind control. But Ansel’s specialty, deprogramming cult members and returning them to their families, is not an exact science, and a series of financial setbacks has left him in debt to his manager. Ansel warns Claire’s parents that his deprogramming methods are risky and expensive, but they agree to hire him to kidnap and deprogram their daughter. Claire quickly reveals herself to be a formidable challenge. Her belief is unshakeable and her logic is undeniable. A battle of wits develops between the two as they delve deeper and deeper into each other’s minds.
