Midnight Museum (2023)

The tale of involuntary naps and ass whopping.

So, I’m not gonna lie, Midnight Museum is a complete mess - from how the characters are written, through the countless plot holes and underdeveloped plotlines, up till the rushed ending. It’s entertaining though. I think it is… I honestly cannot be sure how much of my enjoyment came from all the chats, comments, posts and discussions with other mdl users. This is a perfect show to hype each other up about. (psst... I do love the show though. I sold my soul to it).

While the idea behind the plot is brilliant, the execution left a lot to desire. From the start it was an episodic type of a deal, which seemed to exist more as a promo for all the GMMTV actors and less as a means to tell a cohesive story. Not to mention the mix of supernatural, fantasy and even sci-fi theories - nothing to be explained or explored. It’s just a big bag of everything, that ends up being nothing.

I understand where they were going with the plot, but I honestly think they lacked a writer and director with experience in that genre. Midnight Museum is just not a smooth viewing experience. They did not highlight important details in the scenes, lines that were explaining connections between plotlines, hints that would make it easier for viewers to understand the whole picture. When you watch the episode, it’s hard to tell what you should focus on and what info might be useful later on.

You know what it feels like? Like watching just a middle season of a tv show - you don’t get a proper setup for the characters nor a well explained conclusion. It just felt like there should be more at the beginning and the end. All that said, the second half of the last episode was just phenomenal. Added 0.5 to my rating just because of these last 40 minutes. But it also made me truly see how much potential to be a masterpiece this drama had.

While I love Khatha and Dome for their interactions (local straight boys acting gay, if you know what I mean), and Khatha was quite a “mood” on many occasions, I don’t think I have ever seen weaker main characters than them. Dome was forced to take a few too many involuntary naps and Khatha got his ass whooped by almost every bad character. That said, this was a bromance on the level of Chinese censored gay romance and for that I am grateful.

Then we have all the supporting characters: Anthika served looks, Triphop and Bam got the “kind of competent, but not really” presentation with a 0.5% fling going on, June was there to make Khatha accept his feelings for Dome and Boon… barely existed. That’s more or less what the characters brought to the table. I think it’s kind of an achievement to have 10 episodes and not one character actually developed.

What saved all of these characters? Amazing acting. Tor and Gun did a great job and their on screen chemistry was to die for. It’s nice to see two competent actors together, because too often we watch one person carry the whole show on their backs.

Supporting cast did a great job too. Yes, I would appreciate Saiparn going one step further and exaggerating the character just a little bit more and Tay giving me a little bit more expression during some scenes, but overall, I don’t really have many complaints. I’m especially content with all the guest appearances and the quality of acting there.

The MVP award goes to Nanon though. This guy delivered probably his best performance up to date.

For the production value - it fluctuated. I was not exactly on board with the set designs. The museum felt painfully empty and not grand enough. I think the majority of the costume budget went to dress Tor, so the rest was underwhelming (especially June - the design for the dress was great, but the quality of it seemed cheap). Some special effects were nice, some were rather questionable. There is also the case of actors not being used to acting with nothing, which made the CGI elements stand out more and not feel like they were part of the picture.

Overall, entertaining mess. It had a lot of potential, but most of it was not used. They tried to pack too much into these 10 episodes so we ended up with a diluted story with little details and world building. I would highly recommend it as a group watch, because it benefits greatly from exchanging theories and hyping each other up as you watch. It’s a great memes and joke source.

That ending though. I don't think I could be more happy with all that crazy shit at the end. Exactly my type of a deal.

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everything and nothing

Midnight Museum was a very ambitious project, there is mystery, science fiction, dark magic and curses, fantasy and even some religious jargon thrown into the mix–everything and nothing because it did not create a cohesive plot. It was almost as if the show makers couldn't decide exactly what they wanted to create, not to mention it also as very convenient plot points.

The biggest fallacy of this show is its pacing. When Khatha's museum is robbed, the dark artefacts he has stowed away make their way into innocent hands and create chaos. The first six episodes revolve around a bunch of random people discovering these artefacts and killing a bunch of other random people. The excitement is boosted by bunch of random cameos by a l o t of popular gmmtv actors. Also, did i say "innocent people" because no, these were terrible people and the artefacts brought out the worst in them. It was fun as the kill count kept increasing with each episode, but it does get boring after a while you know? In retrospect, I wonder if the show was created for this very purpose, to showcase the gmmtv roster.

Throughout this however, gmmtv was working on the gayest bromance to ever exist—the story of Dome and Khatha. The actors, Tor and Gun, have a "to die for" chemistry, probably because they themselves are very capable actors. Honestly, without them and their "bromance", Midnight Museum would have ended up on my drop pile. Their intriguing past and the estranged soulmates thing they had going for them was really awesome, at the very least it did keep me impatient every week for the ep to air.

After episode 6, the show kind of loses steam in terms of fantasy. We are now thrust into the emotional exploration of Khatha's past and we learn some unexpected (and some very expected) things. Cue another cameo. But this was really strong development on the "bromance". Then all of a sudden we are thrust unceremoniously into the possibility of multiverse. Think multiple moons, nerd scientists, communicating with the past from a different galaxy–hardcore shit. And Dome is lost!

Now with the sudden absence of my favorite on screen off screen straight gays, I was examining the plot and all I saw was a string of unexplained bizarreness with some murder thrown in; plot holes or a lack of plot to even have holes! And lo! We have been fooled ;) There is no plot, is what I realised as even more bizarreness unfolded in front of me.

Coming to the characters, Bright as a moth-eating murderer was more developed as a person than the supposed important side characters of this series. Take June for example, I found so many viewers confused as to who she was although it was actually shown in the very first episode, in a very confusing way. Then there was Bam, a "spunky" officer; i put that in quotes because spunky equates to useless and dumb enough to be killed. And Phob, he supposedly helped Khatha do undercover work ...

In shows like these, I usually turns to the villains. But the villains here were either behaving like a lazy grouchy teenager or cult leader (played by Tay Tawan, LOL)—they seem to be power hungry and they did given Nanon some very good one liners and Tawan a lot of swag, but their motivations were largely unclear.

Even my favorite b̶r̶o̶mance seems undeveloped now as the Dome in the past wasn't Dome at all! Won't spoil any further but as much as i liked seeing them together, it doesn't make sense to me (but I won't take points for that, bc I love my straight boys). I won't even take points for this queer baiting because wow, that good.

Overall, this has been a terrible disappointment but i can't bring myself to rate this a six, as I rightfully should. The overall production is very lazy—lazy fight scenes,

lazy fashion (1. why was Gun always in that fucking grey tee and pants like a prisoner! 2. impractical clothing for women, CHECK 3. sometimes they dressed Khatha so well and sometimes the clothes looked so cheap...)

lazy pacing (it is slow as a sloth till episode 8 and then it's dashi dashi! keep up! till the finish line),

lazy half-assed development of the universe this was set in, the only consistent point being that it is extremely illogical.

7/10

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