Night – revisited (again)

Back in 2020 I had a new look at Byron C Miller’s film Night as it had received a re-edit from its original release from 2006. I was approached again by the director asking me if I wanted another look and I’ll reproduce why here: “In 2021 SRS Cinema allowed me to do the unthinkable. They took all of my original miniDV tapes, recaptured them at a better resolution and allowed me to do a true director's cut of NIGHT, rebuilding the movie from scratch. It was a lot of fun and while this is the shortest cut of the movie, it's full of little moments and scenes that never made it to any version. Things that got lost back then with me being an inexperienced filmmaker when I first edited this thing on an early 00s computer.”

I’m always happy to have another look and the film, released as the Final Cut, certainly does look better than it did – there is, of course, a limit to what you can do with the source but looking at a screenshot of Tonia (Melanie Ginnett) I grabbed on this re-watch, which I also included when I first reviewed the film, you can contrast the two and see that the film has a much improved, deeper colour palate now.

John Hardy as Jericho

The film flows better than the first release (as did the previous cut) and I was again quite taken by how much I liked the side character Nathaniel (Kelly Weaver) and his deeply held grief that became almost existential. There are moments that I think Miller would have done differently if he were to shoot the film now and narrative extensions that would have worked the film into a better shape, but that’s hindsight, and that is always 20-20.

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Its great that Miller has had the opportunity to hone his film. It isn’t perfect but the original shot footage is what it is and budget can be a strict mistress. I have said all the way along that I liked seeing vampires (bar Nathaniel) who accepted and even revelled in what they are and I have said all the way along that this is one that a genre fan (understanding the budgetary constraints) can get something out of. I am also minded, after the latest watch of the latest cut to increase the score to 5 out of 10 (recognising the better flow and the improved visuals). Finally, a quick shout out to the retro-cover by SRS Cinema, which is just fabulous.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Bonus Bit

At the time of writing, Byron C Miller is crowdfunding his latest feature – not vampire this time but werewolf and he describes it as “a sensual, brutal werewolf film”. The crowdfunding is set to run into July 2023 and can be found here. As always, crowdfunding opportunities are highlighted for information purposes, I am not affiliated with the campaign and backing is at the individual’s personal risk.