Midnight Peepshow (2022)

Director: Andy Edwards, Airell Anthony Hayles, Ludovica Musumeci, Jake West

Year: 2022

Country: United Kingdom

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Anthology

Plot:

Looking for a date on Valentine’s Day, a man encounters a series of shady individuals in a suburb of London leading him to a mysterious adults-only show that features the performers telling him their life stories.

Review:

Personal Space-Stuck together in a cramped apartment, an arguing couple finds themselves forced to bend to the whims of a mysterious intruder who begins taunting them to play out a dark fantasy of hers only for a series of reveals to interrupt their plans. This was a solid enough starting point even though it does have some issues. The main selling point here is the intriguing starting point that brings about a chilling series of events in the first half as we don’t know what’s going on beyond the intruder coming into the situation where they’re slightly at odds with each other the reveals that come about here aren’t bad and do turn out to be far more shocking than expected, but it highlights the series of unrealistic situations that occur with how we’re supposed to treat the reveals that take place. On top of that, for a film about the depths of sexual deviance and tortures taking place this one is immensely cloying about the potential sleaze here with the majority of this one featuring clothed sexual encounters or shying away from the scene for no reason why hold this up somewhat.

F*ck, Marry, Kill-Waking up chained together inside a strange dungeon, a woman and three men from her past are forced to play a dangerous game of MFK with each other to get out of their predicament. This was a massively disappointing and barely worthwhile segment without much going for it. The general setup makes no sense as for how they all got together in the situation as none of this is explained at all so why anyone goes through with it or even cares is an entirely moot point. Even moreso is the fact that there’s very little interesting about anyone here that makes playing the game feel like something worth fighting for as its devolution into Torture-Porn-style aesthetics manages to completely drain any interest from the setup just as much as the highly underwhelming and unlikable the guys are. There’s hardly anything about any of the men she’s forced to spend the trip with that makes it seem they’re supposed to be prizes or any kind of believable outcome, leaving this one to only work with the dingy atmosphere and gore to work nicely with.

The Black Rabbit-Trying to spice up your love life, a housewife starts to undertake challenges from a website designed to make her live out sexual fantasies, but when she grows addicted to the dangers the site provides, forcing him to try to rescue her. This was a disappointing and barely worthwhile sexual thriller to end things on. The general idea here is about the only thing that works, with the idea of the site drawing her deeper into a more perverted underworld than she initially expected before getting in so deep as to be in over her head on what she wants out of the experience. That’s believable and comes off incredibly well but none of it is threatening or scary with very little of any interest happening or a motivation as to why he wants her to come back after going through what he does here so its motivations are sorely lacking overall. As well, the old-age problem of the storylines here involving tons of egregious sexual content and concepts but done in a coy manner with clothed sex scenes despite the depravity on offer makes it disjointed and out-of-touch the concept is.

Midnight Peepshow-Looking for a date on Valentine’s Day, a man encounters a series of shady individuals in a suburb of London leading him to a mysterious adults-only show that features the performers telling him their life stories. This was a solid enough wrap-around if just a bit underwhelming as a story on its own. With the man going around and finding out about the club which leads him into the booths of the performers where they tell their stories, the means of introducing the various clips on display is a workable enough idea as there’s an idea at play here with the performers going through their stories so that works decently enough. The whole purpose of this being a means of tying in the thematic ideas and concepts from the other stories is a bit underwhelming as there’s more at stake in the other segments to tie them together so it makes no sense why they needed to do so again in the finale here which is a wholly disappointing one to try to end this one. Still, its intermediate trips through the darkened club to get to the next booth offer up some intriguing aspects to like overall here.

Overview: **.5/5

A gradually more disappointing if still watchable anthology, this one still has quite a lot to like about it even though a few huge factors do creep up in many of the stories lowering this one overall. Those who are intrigued by this one, are hardcore anthology buffs, or are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here while most others out there should heed caution with it.