STRAIGHT ON TIL MORNING (2025)

New streaming on Tubi from Disrupt Entertainment!
Directed by Craig Ouellette.
Written by Neal McLaughlin, Craig Ouellette.
Check out the trailer here! !

When musician Dani (Kelsey Christian) happens into the restaurant where Kaitlin (Bonnie Jean Tyer) works and witnesses her boyfriend abusing her, the two share a spark and soon, the two decide to throw care to the wind and go on a road trip together. But just as their relationship is starting to get interesting, the two are abducted by a strange family who I tend to marry off one of the girls to their physically giant but mentally slow masked son. As the wedding approaches, Dani and Kaitlin fight to survive and escape so they can hopefully be free to attend the Lilith fair someday in the future.

Not to be mistaken with the early seventies shocker of the same name, STRAIGHT ON TIL MORNING is straight up THELMA AND LOUISE meets TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Which is fine, although extremely derivative of the two almost beat for beat. I love me a good killer family flick and this one even stars Maria Olsen as the matriarch of the family, who I happened to base the matriarch of my own comic book derivation of TCM called GRAVETRANCERS (ask your comic shop to order you a copy, btw). Olsen is good as always but playing a rather cliched role here as Mama. While not as shocking or effectively terrifying as TCM, STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING does commit to these roles and tries to distinguish this movie by adding the marriage theme.

But the problem with LGBTQ horror such as this one is that you just can’t trust the critical acclaim. Though I rarely follow the hype, I couldn’t help but see the slathering of praise STRAIGHT ON TIL MORNING has received and while it’s not a bad film, it’s not a particularly great one either. It’s typical and middle of the road. The problem is that because a film has LGBTQ themes, most critics feel the need to automatically douse it with praise, simply because it has LGBTQ themes and not because it is particularly good. Well, I’m not most critics and while I don’t mind LGBTQ themes, its presence doesn’t necessarily make this movie bulletproof.

The performances of the two leads are strong even though the timeline is extremely rushed. Dani and Kaitlin meet and automatically seem to fall head over vaginas for one another. Still, my lesbian friend tells a joke “What does a lesbian bring to a second date? Her suitcase.” As it is common for people in that community to rush into things, so these moves track, I guess. What doesn’t track is that Dani and Kaitlin, after being put into this extreme situation, how these two girls would stop at absolutely nothing to save the other. I get it that true love is a movie trope, LGBTQ or not, and it’s a romanticized concept that the connection between the two is one for the universe. But Dani sacrifices everything to save Kaitlin, I’m and it just isn’t believable that this would happen given the timeline established.

I enjoyed parts of STRAIGHT ON TIL MORNING as the drama beats are all there. But the way the film simply cuts and pastes scenes from THELMA AND LOUISE and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE without much change grated at my nerves after a while. Yes, instead of a mask made of skin, this mongo killer sports a duct tape mask. Yes, the cop in the family really is a cop rather than posing as one as in the TCM remake. But the horror and drama feels lifted rather than earned.

In the end, I just didn’t buy the drama between the two leads, rushed relationship or not. It’s romance novel dramatics that takes center stage and that’s just not my type of movie. The derivation from TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was fine with me because I love that movie and most different takes of it. If you’re gay, you might like it, but still, if you’re a gay horror fan and being objective, STRAIGHT ON TIL MORNING is going to feel mighty familiar.