At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul/Review

We begin our feature presentation with not one, but two prologues. The first comes from Coffin Joe as he stares into the audience to question them on the meaning of life and death. The next one comes in the form of a Romani woman with multiple bones around her sanctuary. She warns that this film is too much for a person to take and taunts us for having a courage that doesn’t exist. Naturally many of us like to take a leap of faith which will soon be put to the test. That is once we hear the title which sounds like something you hear from a monster under your bed.. “At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul”!

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Cut to the first scene where we get introduced to Coffin Joe, a.k.a. Zé do Caixão. By day he is a caretaker for a cemetery of a small town near São Paulo, Brazil. When darkness falls and his eyes turn bloodshot, he becomes something much more sinister. Zé is a nihilistic libertine with a complete contempt for organized religion. He considers it to be impairing to reason and believes himself to be the übermensch for being (in his mind) the only headstrong goat in a herd of sheep.

Caixão’s story centers around him trying to find what he considers to be “the perfect woman”. His motivation is that according to him if he has a son with her, then he’ll be immortal through continuity of blood. He fatally tortures his wife with a spider once he discovers that she’s incapable of producing a child. Zé then tries to covet his neighbor’s wife only to drive her to suicide once she’s confronted by this madman. All the while everything around him starts to crumble as his deprived acts of rape and murder get him his final judgment from the eyes of the angry souls he once tormented.

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Now for some preliminary highlights and that begins with the man of the hour: Coffin Joe. The man behind him, José Mojica Marins has accomplished a milestone with a such a character like him. He’s managed to dig deep into the darkest trenches of the human soul to create from that sludge a feat of clay too evil to be called human. Zé isn’t afraid to take a stab not only at the flesh with blood splattering, but at ideas many people hold near and dear to them. He’ll spare no expense at telling you you’re a fool for believing in God and he stands head and shoulders above you for letting his animal instincts take charge.

Two scenes in particular cement this dastardly vibe to him. First is the bar scene where he starts out playing cards with a fellow patron. When the opposing player has second thoughts, Zé builds suspense before stabbing him on the hands with a broken bottle. Minutes later, he bullwhips a guy that tried to fight him in a moment that can be described as an avant-garde take on “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. Then there’s Coffin Joe killing his neighbor, Antonio after he explained his raging atheism to the latter. He even mocks him by asking where his god was when he needed him before drowning him in the bathtub á la Henri-Georges Clouzot.

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The dialogue helps in establishing the duality of the film which helps keep a certain fun aspect to the plot. One particular favorite is in the first act when Lenita scorns Zé for eating meat on good Friday and brings up the devil. He responds by saying, “If I see the devil, I’ll invite him over.” That made me kinda giggle and that kind of line I can see an edgy teenager writing on their social media website for spite. Going back to the bar scene, Joe says to the crowd, “I'm going to the crossroads by the graveyard. Anyone wants to follow me?” Like you know he’s just tempting them to an early grave.

Speaking of which, one final highlight is the visuals with all the beautifully macabre scenery. Cinematographer Giorgio Attili goes all the way with little shots like the spider on Lenita’s neck to Coffin Joe ascending the staircase like he’s channeling Count Orlok. Then there’s the finale with Antonio and Terezinha taking revenge on Caixão. If you ever look up the word, “gothic” in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of from this scene as an example. That’s how phenomenal it is from the looks to the words it silently speaks.

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From “At Midnight, I’ll Take Your Soul” came a character that would be Brazil’s leading boogeyman. Though I highly recommend it, I must do a first and issue a strong word of caution. Don’t watch if you’re a devout Christian and find any sort of slander against sacred morals offensive. But if you’re more open to watching some well-acted, superbly-written and ghoulishly dazzling action, then go nuts. This is one bearded nonbeliever in a hat that I can get behind anyway of the week.

I give it 5 blood-soaked fedoras from every dead neckbeard, atheist nice gut tm on Reddit out of 5 - check it out!