A young girl is kidnapped by a strange man, who forces her to be the star of his sick and twisted live stream.

“Next, on Sick Sad World” … writer/director Nicholas Michael Jacobs’ disturbing docu-style film, Night (2019) — a pseudo snuff film about a live-streaming killer during a night with his latest prey. As his directorial debut, Jacobs’ Night plays on our psyches with a narrative based in the reality of today’s “watch me” culture; for this reason, and for some minor technical errors, Night may be a tough watch for some, but it will be a fresh and fascinating watch for those who venture to watch this voyeuristic video.

Our eyes strain to focus on a white ceiling as the sounds of preparation softly echo — a backpack zipping, someone getting dressed, shuffling, and then “Here we go”. Night follows a man by the name of Adam Audrey (Nicholas Michael Jacobs), a serial killer who webcams his nights of kidnapping and killing. One evening, Adam notices a young girl, Judy (Gianna Jacobs), alone on the streets of Philadelphia. After following her, he is able to snatch her and bring her back to his home where he ties her to a chair and sets the view of the camera onto them, dead ahead. The masked assailant lets his victim know that the show will begin at midnight, which is precisely the time that he opens his live-stream channel to his waiting and loyal audience. He steadies the group’s pace, directing them to start out with “non-fatal” requests as they bid to see their torturous fantasies inflicted upon his stolen victim. Strangling, headbanging, punching, and kicking seem to be on the menu, and the night escalates into a series of even more murderous events.

It’s an odd thing to praise, but the stalking parts were nice; had the movie just jumped into the solitary, claustrophobia-inducing room where the rest of the film takes place, we would have missed the suspense that, that sequence, and only that sequence, builds. Though I do like the stalking, the scene lingers long past its effect on the audience. After a while, it seems gratuitous as it is about twice too long, however, it does add emotional girth to the film with us spending time stalking with the stalker. After a while, I even felt a little culpable as if I should be calling 911, making me question whether I am the type or not that would call 911… or just view. This may have been the point of the film, since all too often people do simply watch instead of taking action, though since we never get a true sense of motivation from either of the players — why was this little girl alone at night walking around Philadelphia, and why is this guy capturing and killing specifically young girls, anyway — perhaps the film is just a culture comment on what seems to be our numbness to violence. The film is shot in POV, not through his eyes, for our voyeur pleasure, after all.

And about that POV, the positioning of the camera is often at a stationary standstill, besides toppling over a few times during scuffles. This motionless framing gives the movie a dead feeling, whether inadvertent or intentional.  I can only guess as to whether he chose not to show the chat messages in order to save on budget and editing, or if it was more so to play up the fact that the same dark requests might really be inside some audience members’ minds without it having to be on screen (yikes!). Because the dialogue, at times, felt forced, especially against the super raw aesthetic of this video camera feel, I surprisingly found myself saying less talking more torture! I do think it is fairly easy to make fake blood, and, for the amount of supposed knife inflicted wounds that happened, there was nary any blood and the skin slicing looked unrealistic. The fact that she wasn’t screaming at all is the biggest fault to this movie… but I guess I can assume they did not want to wake the neighbors in real life, and I can just insert the necessary screaming from my mind’s horror movie scream-bank. Had there been the correct screaming, bruising, and blood, and had it been edited to about half its runtime, I believe this movie would have been a very impressive combo of suspense and horror. It isn’t at its present state, however, it is a good movie for what it is, with a winning approach to a great premise.

A killer and hostage trade verbal and body blows throughout a trying and horrifying night, and we get to come along for the ride. But who are the sick ones; the killer that is killing, or us that are watching and doing nothing? Once you realize how very plausible this situation is, it becomes gripping, and only minor first-time jitters occasionally jarred me out of the flow. At some points, suspense climaxes into frustration rather than fear, however, overall this movie should be watched for its style, and the fact that the director is fresh out of high school is only more evidence of the possibilities to come. At just over an hour, it is a quick and memorable watch. In any case, us baying horror populous will be satisfied with a death at the end of this spider-and-fly battle — watch to find out who escapes a morbid fate on the world wide web in Nicholas Michael Jacobs’ found-footage chiller, Night, available now on Amazon.