Midnight in the Switchgrass – Film Review

Bruce Willis (Die Hard) and Megan Fox (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) lead a cast including Emile Hirsch (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Lukas Haas (Inception), and Colson Baker (Bird Box) in this crime-thriller. While in Florida on another case, FBI agents Helter (Willis) and Lombardo (Fox) cross paths with state cop Crawford (Hirsch), who’s investigating a string of female murders that appear to be related. Lombardo and Crawford team up for an undercover sting, but it goes horribly wrong, plunging Lombardo into grave danger and pitting Crawford against a serial killer in a twisted game of cat and mouse.

Before I watch a movie, I always try my best not to judge the film based on the marketing materials alone. Heck, sometimes I don’t even look at the poster or trailer ahead of time just so I can go in one-hundred-percent blind, but in the case of Randall Emmett‘s Midnight in the Switchgrass, I took one look at the poster and immediately got a terrible feeling.

Why does Bruce Willis look bored out of his mind, almost like he had no other choice but to accept the role otherwise he would’ve been in debt or something? Megan Fox is usually in a lot of garbage but is recently having a career resurgence. So why would she agree to be in this right when her career was starting to improve finally? These are questions I’ll never know the answer to. But what I do know is that Midnight in the Switchgrass is easily one of the worst movies of the year so far.

This is a crime-thriller that not only barely focuses on the crimes it promises to explore in its premise, but it also has no thrilling sequences anywhere throughout its running time. This film could have been a genuinely riveting story about the horrors of sex-trafficking rings and by all accounts, this movie should’ve left audiences feeling sick to their stomachs. It should’ve been a gut-punch of a movie that tells a relentlessly dark story with plenty of twists and turns along the way, but sadly, this film fails on delivering that on all fronts.

It all feels like one of those god-awful movies you’d find in the Walmart bargain bin for a dollar or two. You come home, you throw it on, hate it, and forget it even exists the very next day. The characters here are so thinly developed that I don’t even want to call them characters. The film’s first thirty minutes or so feature a handful of scenes that seem to be setting up a major conflict later on, but it all fizzles out once you realize that they’re never going to be explored again.

The villain characters in this movie are genuinely terrible and never once have any scene that fleshes them out. They just sort of exist within this story and whether you like it or not, the screenwriter and director simply do not care.

Bruce Willis is one of the most talented actors ever in my opinion. There are a lot of great performances he has given throughout the course of his career, but my favorite might just be his work as David Dunn in M. Night Shyamalan‘s Eastrail 177 trilogy. Here, in the role of Karl Helter, he is atrocious. It honestly seems as though these days, Willis hates acting and only does it for the paycheck.

I’m not even kidding around when I say that he is sitting down for almost the entirety of this movie as well. Virtually every single scene he’s in showcases him sitting in some sort of vehicle looking absolutely exhausted and delivering a couple of lines, and then it rolls into the next scene. There’s maybe one or two scenes where he actually stands up, and the rest, he slumps down in a chair and calls it “acting”.

Megan Fox isn’t necessarily bad here but she isn’t all that good, either. She is significantly better than Willis here but even still, her acting can be a bit wooden at times and her line delivery can be hit or miss. This movie has a number of high-profile actors in it and I am baffled as to why. What could they have possibly seen in this script?

To be fair though, one of the stars of the film, Colson Baker (also known under his stage name Machine Gun Kelly) didn’t even show up to the premiere of the movie because he said it was “sh-t”, and honestly, I agree with him. At least he isn’t afraid to speak his mind.

There are obviously worse movies out there and there are definitely worse ways to spend your time, but don’t get me wrong – Midnight in the Switchgrass is a hideously bad crime-thriller that fails on every front.

Overall Grade: F

MPAA Rating: R for violence, and language throughout

Cast: Megan Fox, Bruce Willis, Emile Hirsch, Lukas Haas, Colson Baker, Lydia Hull, Sistine Stallone, Michael Beach, Caitlin Carmichael, Alec Monopoly, Welker White, Jackie Cruz

Directed by: Randall Emmett

Written by: Alan Horsnail

Distributed by: Lionsgate

Release Date: July 23, 2021

Running Time: 99 minutes