Byron C. Miller took some hefty chances in his independent feature Night and most of them paid off. Probably the most notably of gutsy moves would be his attempt to take on multiple genres- this was an extremely complex screenplay for such a low budget film. Within his movie 'Night' we have a story about two detective friends who are separated by change. Detective Mike Jericho becomes a vampire and leaves his past behind him, while Mike is adjusting to his new life his best friend Jimi Cannon is out trying to find out where he disappeared to. But does Mike want to be found?

I want to get the one and only terrible thing about this movie out of the way because the rest was so good. During the movie there are two stories unfolding at the same time; one is Mike becoming a vampire and the other is Jimi hunting him down. The first 20 minutes or so spends most of its time building Mike's character. Director Miller attempts (but fails) to give us one of those fun "I'm becoming a vampire, isn't this cool" films. Mike is discovering how cool his new life is, only we just don't give a sh-t. I almost didn't get passed the opening- but thank god I did because the rest of the film is quite refreshing! I really got into Jimi's character and his hunt for his best friend. I think Miller should get more into the action/drama scene than into horror. As Jimi searched for mike I got into his story and was following every step he took. But who am I kidding, the story isn't what made this movie "refreshing," it was a mix between the "better than bad" acting, editing, camerawork and score.

The camera work and cinematography slightly reminded me of James Wan's 'Saw.' It was a frenzy of images that make me think I might have an epileptic seizure by the time it was over- this flick is filled with some high intensity scenes. We get a melting pot of strobe lights, different color tones, industrial/techno music, breasts, lesbians, sweat, insane camera work and masterful home editing that went to the beat of the music. Maybe Miller should think about directing music videos in his future? It's amazing what you can accomplish on a Mac these days, wish I had 2K to blow...

But here's something I'm sure will catch you by surprise- not only does pretty much every aspect of this movie rock, but there are some tremendous fight scenes. Hats off to their Choreographer, who knew that an indie film could have such a fabulously assembled fight sequence? It makes me wonder how hard Jet Li and Jackie Chan are really working. The only problem is that there are a few bad edits within the fight scene that are quite noticeable- but all in all it was impressive.

Because 'Night' takes such a serious tone, there really is no need for "on the spot" blood. We get a lot of aftermath shots and edits so we don't actually see bullets flying into people’s skulls. But how would you do that with no budget? The way Miller used his camera to work around these problems makes me respect his work even more.

In the end it really saddens me that I didn't love the film. Byron's work is fabulous, but in the end I wasn't fully entertained. There were a lot of boring scenes I wanted to skim through, and like I said, the story arc with Mike really didn't do anything for me. If you ever get a chance to see this film, I highly recommend taking a peak- it makes me wonder how some of these big budget pieces of crap get made. Kudos Miller, can't wait to see what's next!