As part of the Blumhouse Productions horror firm “Into the Dark” anthology series, Hulu will be breaking new ground with the release of “Midnight Kiss” — a slasher movie in which a quartet of Los Angeles gay men are picked off by a masked killer during a weekend trip to Palm Springs.
“The friends are a quartet of L.A. gays and their closest straight gal pal,” the Los Angeles Times wrote of the movie. “Their cabin in the woods is a rambling, ultra-modern manse in Palm Springs. And ‘Scream’s’ white mask has been replaced with a sly reference to the popular kink known as ‘pup play.'”
“In other words, ‘Midnight Kiss,’ which arrives Friday on Hulu, gleefully remixes familiar genre tropes with distinctly gay subject matter, delving into the use of hookup apps and the pitfalls of open relationships while coining the hilariously ribald phrase ‘psychopath bottom,'” the report continued.
According to the Daily Mail, “Pup Play” is a kink subculture within BDSM “in which mostly men act like young dogs decked out in gear that includes a colorful array of masks, hoods, muzzles, collars, leashes, mitts and tails, and sometimes coupled with brightly-hued knee socks stamped with paw prints. ”
In an interview with the Times, actors August Prew and Scott Evans, along with writer Erlingur Thoroddsen and director Carter Smith, recalled how the film centered on its subject matter and Hulu’s encouragement in creating a mainstream “gay slasher movie” that uses aspects of gay culture to create a horror-thriller.
“Being able to make a gay slasher movie for one of the major streaming services is a sort of tectonic shift in its own right,” said the Times.
“I hate that it seems groundbreaking. That really sucks. [But] it’s kinda cool,” responded Evans.
“Horror, traditionally, gay people have had to read between the lines,” said director Carter Smith. “It’s spoken to queer people before, but it’s rarely represented them in a way that they felt like they could see themselves. It’s very rare that you see a gay character in a horror film that is not there to be the sidekick or the best friend or the comic relief.”
On the subject of race, the Times wondered if perhaps critics might see the movie as “too white,” given that the two queer characters of color do not make it to the final round of slasher-dom.
“Everybody’s gonna criticize. Of course they are,” said Evans. “But come on! Look at the bigger picture! It’s a cast full of gay men playing gay parts. Also, seeing those abs at the beginning. … It’s what hooks the gays.”
“In the script stage, and in pre-production — before we cast anything — there wasn’t that much talk or thought about what these people looked like,” Smith added. “That wasn’t how Zachary was written at all. Zachary was a studly male model in the script. And then Chester [Lockhart] came in read for it, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God.'”
“We spend so long searching for ourselves in entertainment, but more than anything, this is a very specific story about a very specific group of people, and hopefully all types of viewers can find a bit of themselves in these characters,” he continued.