Review: Midnight in the Switchgrass

An FBI agent (Megan Fox) teams up with a Florida cop (Emile Hirsch) in tracking down a serial killer (Lukas Haas). Bruce Willis plays Fox’s veteran partner, Fox’s real-life partner Colson Baker (AKA Machine Gun Kelly) plays a pimp, and Michael Beach plays another cop at the start of the film.

 

Given the involvement of divisive personalities such as Megan Fox, Emile Hirsch and director/producer Randall Emmett (who next up roped in Robert De Niro and John Malkovich for “Savage Salvation”), as well as featuring the notably unwell Bruce Willis, it’s little surprise that this 2021 film copped a pasting. Rumour has it that Willis struggled to make this film and that Emmett may have even pushed him into making the film. However, like Willis’ “Out of Death”, the film isn’t a total wash as a film at least. In fact, it’s slightly better than that outing. Hopefully you will note that I’m still not saying this is a good film, nor am I recommending it nor excusing any possible mistreatment of Mr. Willis (I can’t confirm one way or the other on that). Still, this one is actually OK…ish. For what it is.

 

Let’s get the worst of it out of the way though, Megan Fox is immediately awful and miscast here. She’s never been a good actress but here it’s like her first day as a human being. She has no clue how to convince as human, let alone as a cop. It’s a massive problem because she’s our lead. It’s not critical, but it’s damaging. Almost as bad is a cameo by a wildly overpitched Michael Beach. He’s been much better elsewhere, and it’s a real surprise from such a veteran of film and TV that he strikes the wrong note. As for Willis, whatever was going on behind the scenes…it doesn’t really show up on screen. He actually looks and performs much better here than in several of his other films of the last decade (“Reprisal”, anyone?). He’s pretty much fine for the limitations he was working with. People are carrying on like this is his worst performance, it’s not even the worst performance in the film! Emile Hirsch, another troubled presence has a role here too and although he seems to be phoning it in, at least he’s doing it competently. Even Cap Gun Kelly is well-cast here as a scummy pimp. The best performance – in fact the best thing in the whole film – comes from former child actor Lukas Haas as the somewhat Keith Jesperson-esque family man serial killer. Haas has been around forever and in recent years quietly going about good, solid work usually in much loftier films than this. An inspired bit of casting against type, he’s really quite good and creepy in the part. The Florida scenery is the other big highlight, though I did get awfully sick of all the ‘switchgrass’ references, both visual as well as verbal references in the script by Alan Horsnail (two other recent Willis films “Fortress” and “Fortress: Sniper’s Eye”). We get it, the film’s got ‘switchgrass’ in the title and you think it’s a cool word or something. It’s not. Speaking of things we get, there’s a cover here of Dire Straits’ haunting ‘Brothers in Arms’. It’s actually a perfectly fine cover, but what does it have to do with the material here? Weird.

 

Unlike seemingly everyone else on the planet, I didn’t hate this film. There are some problems with it, particularly an awful Megan Fox performance. However, I like serial killer films and this one’s got a solid serial killer turn by Lukas Haas. Nicely shot, too. This one’s not bad.

 

Rating: C+