New Thriller DVD Release Draws Inspiration From 'A Christmas Carol'

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 17, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- This December Winter Star Entertainment releases "Midnight Reckoning," first-time writer-director Derrick Warfel's "Twilight Zone"-like feature about a reckless rock musician's horrific, midnight run-in with a rogue prophet who warns him he only has one night left to live.  Following its theatrical release in September and October the film debuts on DVD just as the holiday world remembers Charles Dickens' classic Christmas story of a selfish workaholic who is also forced by supernatural forces to reconsider the error of his ways all in one startling night.

"There's something about Christmas that makes us reevaluate what we've done with ourselves for the last year, or even with our entire lives," said Warfel.  "Though I didn't plan this to be a Christmas story per se, I realized very early on the many similarities to the Dickens masterpiece and learned as much as I could from it.  The story includes spirits both good and evil, premonitions of the future, and a central character who undergoes a profound spiritual experience by the end of the movie.  However the theme of new hope, and that it's never too late to turn your life is very much a theme of Christmas."

Besides Warfel, (also a Co-Producer on another feature with Ken Wales, the producer of "Amazing Grace", 2007), the 86 minute, triple award winning "Midnight Reckoning boasts Bruce Michael Hall ("Passions", "One Life to Live") as the rocker; Tony Longo ("The Cooler" "Mulholland Drive"), as the eccentric prophet; Persia White ("Girlfriends") as the seer's mysterious sidekick; Grant Bowler ("Deadwood", "Ugly Betty", "Lost") as a dangerous desert conman.; and veteran Al Harrington (the original "Hawaii Five-O") as a wise yet puzzling wilderness dweller.

"We take you on an unnerving ride to that Rod Serling territory frequented by David Lynch, 'Lost', 'X-Files', and Christopher Nolan in 'Memento' and 'Inception,'" said Warfel, an Eastern Pennsylvania native and with Masters Degrees from U.S.C. film school and Dallas Theological Seminary. "Like Nolan, I'm interested in making a thinking person's thriller, and nothing makes you think, like the imminence of death and the spiritual implications it raises."

For more information: www.MidnightReckoning.com.

SOURCE Winter Star Entertainment