A short film like the horror comedy Midnight Snack is what happens when you create a cool-looking puppet monster and then need to shoot a story about it with your friends. I don’t know. Maybe the story came first. Either way, we get to see a furry, white, toothy, blue-fingered, red-eyed munchkin of a monster that attacks (and in some cases kills) apartment dwellers in their own kitchen.
Enter Dave and Cathy
The focus of Midnight Snack is a couple, Dave and Cathy, who we meet after they just move into a sketchy apartment building.
Austin Packard plays Dave with sarcastic confidence, masking an underlying bitterness about his financial situation. Or maybe he’s just accepted his fate in life. Or maybe I’m projecting.
Tawny Safieddine plays Cathy as an exasperated woman who probably wonders why she’s with Dave, thinking she could do better than him. Or maybe she’s just accepted her fate in life. Or maybe I’m projecting the feelings from my last girlfriend.
22-Minute Run Time — Razor Thin Plot
The plot of Midnight Snack is as thin as the apartment’s walls, but most of us don’t watch horror films for plot. After all, my favorite horror film of all time is the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes. Deformed cannibal hillbillies in the desert. ‘Nuff said.
Anyway, the plot of Midnight Snack centers around Dave and Cathy who don’t have much money, so they jump at the chance to reside in a low-rent apartment. They don’t know the resident before them died a horrible death via the aforementioned puppet monster after opening his oven.
Most of the scenes follow Dave and Cathy as they deal with their apartment’s pest control problem. Their property manager is Nick, whose idea of a solution is to give Dave a handful of mousetraps. Nick is played by Noah Ginex as an annoyed, grumpy, rude, rumpled, tired-looking bearded Eastern European (I think). He’s the kind of guy who’d fit right in with the dudes in Hostel.
Having Fun With Heavy Themes
On the surface, this 22-minute amateur short film from Underhanded Productions is a fun diversion that provides some laughs. The jokes are cheesy. The monster is cheesy. I wondered if the couple living in the apartment could afford cheese. Or maybe they spent their cheese budget on the special effects.
I think the plot of Midnight Snack offers a deeper subtext about young adults struggling to make ends meet in today’s economy, forcing them to live in less-than-ideal digs. I think the monster is a metaphor for how the costs of home repairs (and living in general) take big bites out of small budgets. Or maybe the monster symbolizes the dangers of kitchen appliances. A twist at the end alludes to the problem of predatory landlords. Of course, there’s the cheeky double meaning of the title. So, there may be more depth to this creature feature than at first meets the eye.
About Sam Locke
Produced in 2025, Midnight Snack is helmed by award-winning director and puppeteer Sam Locke and written by Locke, Jillian Mueller, and Peter Robards. Mueller also doubles as a hardware store customer, and Robards hams it up as the exterminator. I thought the soundtrack by Lisa McQueen and the stop motion photography by Todd Rogers elevated the film’s production value. And I admit that I liked the puppet. It reminded me of a demented, tinier version of Cookie Monster, one that was born premature because its mother smoked crack while pregnant.
According to the director’s website, Midnight Snack won Best Short Horror at the Cult Movies International Film Festival; Best Comedy Short at Magic Silver Screen International Film Festival; and Best Dark Comedy, Best Editor and Best Sound Design at the Hollywood Blood Horror Festival.
A Fun Little Comedy Horror Short
Ultimately, Midnight Snack is exactly what the title suggests – a dark little treat to sate your horror-comedy appetite for a few minutes. It’s like eating a bag of Gummi Bears, if the Gummi Bears were furry, white, toothy, blue-fingered, and red-eyed… and that shred your jugular when disturbed.
Midnight Snack (2026) - Bite Sized Horror Comedy - Malevolentdark
Director: Sam Locke
Date Created: 1970-01-01 00:33