The movie poster for NIGHT NIGHT recalls old school movie posters, say from the age of Alfred Hitchcock. And its plot has more than a few passing Hitchcockian undertones, even if imitated pretty badly.
The first strike against the movie is its production values: they look so cheap that it is suprising to see at least a half-way realistic-looking accident-scene. But other than that, the cinematography almost yells "basement budget" in practically every scene.
The second strike is that the movie does not contain much tension, as it is possible to figure out what is really happening quite early in the movie. I dismissed it as way too implausible (see third point) and was therefore hoping for a plot twist involving the protagonist's brother, but the entire thread involving him ended up being irrelevant to the story.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the plot is so implausible that it not only passes the threshold of incredulity, but leaves it so far behind that it passes the threshold of stupidity. What are the chances of such an event happening? How did the police not figure it out immediately? How does the villain have such apparently superhuman powers in manipulating data remotely and killing a police officer on short notice without getting caught? Why was there no discussion about who was at fault in the accident before it was dumped on the audience at the end in a court scene? And what was up with that nonsensical, stupid epilogue?
As of this writing, NIGHT NIGHT is rated 7.3 on IMDb. I have found that, for whatever reason, high IMDb scores seem to be unreliable indicators of quality for recently made indie movies. A couple other low-budget, low-quality affairs with similar problems I have seen are TAKE OUT and a WISEGUY CHRISTMAS, which got 7.6 and 8.0 respectively, as of this writing. I think from now on I will ignore high IMDb scores for indie movies less than 3 years old.
