The story opens from an elaborate party-game of charades gone wrong, into a murder, via the switching of blank bullets for live ones. Enter the ever-bumbling detectives. Of course everyone present is a suspect. Thus the suspicion and subsequent murders ensues. A letter and will from the victim goes missing and the police expend an awful lot of energy trying to discover their whereabouts. This is because finding them can save the police from a lot of honest detective work! Eventually it is discovered that one of the main murder weapons was a phone with a concealed blade! Of course, this is exploited in finally revealing the identity of the killer. Although this monotonous murder mystery begins quite promisingly, it fails to fully develop into anything that interesting. There are a couple of relatively original plot twists, but these are far and few between enough to make this feel like it plods on at a snail's pace. The directing and camera-work are capable but the cast give wholly underwhelming performances. All in all, this movie would suit the avid fan of 30's murder mysteries, but for the rest of us, there is little to keep us hooked. At least this one doesn't involve a man in a gorilla suit!
Review of Murder at Midnight
