Sometimes horror movies don’t need to have a deeper meaning to them. Sometimes a horror movie can just be a small cast, and a simple plot and work just as well as any big budget, over-the-top blockbuster.
It’s rare that a comet will streak through the night sky past Earth. It’s even rarer for it to come by on a regular schedule. One comet, in particular, has an orbit so wide that it has taken it about 64 million years to come back past Earth. One night in the mid to late 80s this comet was expected to blaze across the sky for all the world to see, and the fact that it was last seen when the dinosaurs went extinct isn’t a coincidence.
Comet parties were expected to rage all night and if you weren’t at one, you weren’t in with the right crowds. Reggie is working with her boyfriend (?) Larry at the movie theater and they were planning on staying the night there so he could sell a print of a movie illegally. Reggie’s sister Sam was home with her step-mom at a comet party, but she “ran away” after the step-mom Doris punched her in the face. Hector was a trucker on his way back to town with his lady friend when he had to spend the night in the back of his truck. All of them stayed in places where they were unable to see the comet. This is lucky for them as anyone that was exposed to the air as the comet passed was turned to dust… or worse. As the group wake up and make their way to the radio station (the only thing still working in the city) they slowly realize, they are some of the only people left alive, but they are NOT alone.
Night of the Comet was not exactly the movie I was expecting it to be. I went into watching this one expecting it to be a terrible movie, but was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s actually pretty well done… for what it is. The script/plot/actors could have easily hammed this one up and taken the movie in a completely different direction. As it stands, everything is taken very seriously (except the ending) and the movie benefits greatly from this. Though I never felt any emotion or feelings for the characters, I did find myself thinking about my own family and what I would do in this kind of situation. Are there plot holes (Chekov’s arcade game)? Sure. But they don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Personally, I think that there should be an updated version of Night of the Comet. It doesn’t have to change much. Keep the cast small. Update the special effects a bit, maybe tone down the 80s hair and leather. It’s a movie that the casual horror fan can probably appreciate. There aren’t a lot of jump scares, and the monsters turn out to be the people that weren’t wearing masks (deep bruh). If you have access to it (I watched it on Amazon Prime) and have never seen it, give it a shot.
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