Katie Price lives in the dark. Her rare disease makes even a few seconds of sunlight deadly, so she stays inside during the day and only comes out once the sun has set. That changes when she meets Charlie Reed, a boy who plays guitar at a train station and catches her eye. The 2018 romantic drama Midnight Sun wants to be a tender love story about connection and fear. Instead, it becomes a film that keeps explaining itself and never quite landing.
Directed by Scott Speer and written by Eric Kirsten, Midnight Sun is based on the 2006 Japanese film A Song to the Sun. The premise is simple: a teenager with xeroderma pigmentosum falls in love, then must decide whether to tell her crush about her condition. Bella Thorne plays Katie, Patrick Schwarzenegger plays Charlie, and Rob Riggle plays Katie’s father Jack. The film was shot in Vancouver, Canada, with principal photography beginning on October 12, 2015. It reached U.S. theaters on March 23, 2018.
Trailer, via Open Road Films.
Katie’s World
Katie’s world is small and carefully guarded. She is housebound during daylight hours, cared for by her father Jack and her best friend Morgan. The film spends its early scenes establishing the routine: Katie comes out at night, walks her dog, practices guitar, and watches the world pass her by. The setup is promising. A girl who can only see the world in shadows, desperate for a moment of normalcy.
Then the film gets in its own way.
Charlie’s Kiss
Charlie notices Katie while playing guitar at the train station. He tries to talk to her, and she leaves abruptly. She forgets her notebook, which Charlie keeps. The next day, Charlie returns the notebook to Katie. He explains his own scars, which keep him from getting a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley. He kisses her.
Katie still hasn’t told Charlie about her condition. Her father has warned her to do so. The film treats this silence as a deliberate choice, a weighty secret that defines the relationship. It isn’t. The secret is that Katie is dying, and the film never finds a way to make that feel urgent.
Seattle and the Sunrise
Charlie takes Katie to Seattle. They attend a live show and Charlie convinces her to perform one of her songs on the city’s streets. They swim in a lake and dry off by a fire on the beach. Charlie mentions watching the sunrise. Katie’s watch stops, and she runs home in terror.
Charlie picks her up and drives her quickly. She doesn’t make it in time. She is exposed to sunlight for just a couple of seconds. Katie runs inside, while Morgan and Jack come home soon after. Charlie stands at the front door. Morgan explains Katie’s condition to him.
The Doctors and the Diagnosis
The doctors run tests. They conclude that Katie’s brain is contracting from exposure to the sun. It is only a matter of time before she dies. Katie develops twitches that prevent her from playing guitar. She ignores Charlie’s messages and calls.
Jack eventually learns the truth.
What the Film Gets Wrong
The central problem is that Katie’s condition is presented as a romantic obstacle rather than a fatal illness. The film treats her disease as a quirk, a twist, a way to make a story more interesting. It isn’t. Her disease is killing her. The film never lets that reality land.
The script also leans heavily on exposition. Characters explain the situation repeatedly, often to each other. This is a movie about a girl who can’t see the sun, and yet it feels like it’s explaining the sun to you constantly. The dialogue is flat and functional, rarely rising to the emotional stakes the story demands.
Thorne is earnest, but she’s given little to work with beyond her wide eyes and her guitar. Schwarzenegger is similarly miscast. Neither actor has the range to sell the weight of a terminal diagnosis. The supporting cast, including Rob Riggle as Jack, Suleka Mathew as Dr. Paula Fleming, and Quinn Shephard as Morgan, are competent but underwritten.
The Technical Details
The film was shot in Vancouver, Canada, with principal photography beginning on October 12, 2015. It runs 92 minutes. The tagline is “Love will light the way.” That’s the kind of marketing promise the film never delivers.
The music is pleasant. The cinematography is competent. The performances are serviceable. None of it rises above the material.
Why It Falls Short
Midnight Sun fails because it refuses to treat its central conflict with gravity. Katie’s disease is a ticking clock, and the film treats it like a costume. The romance is supposed to be transcendent, but it feels like a distraction from the real tragedy. The film keeps circling back to the same idea — Katie loves Charlie, Charlie doesn’t know the whole truth, Katie is scared — without ever deepening it.
The film is also too short. At 92 minutes, it rushes through events that deserve more space. The sunrise scene, the Seattle trip, the beach fire — all of these moments could have carried real weight. Instead, they’re dispatched quickly so the film can get back to its next talking head.
A Better Version
There is a version of this film that works. It would focus entirely on Katie’s interior life, her isolation, her fear of the sun, her longing for connection. It would strip away the romance and let Katie’s condition be the main character. It would be quiet, tense, and devastating. That version is not the one we got.
The Verdict
Midnight Sun is a film that wants to be a tragedy but keeps settling for a romance. It has a premise that could have been extraordinary, but the execution is thin, the writing is repetitive, and the performances are limited. The film is sincere in its intentions but shallow in its execution.
Key Facts
- Title: Midnight Sun (2018)
- Director: Scott Speer
- Writer: Eric Kirsten
- Runtime: 92 minutes
- Release Date: March 23, 2018 (U.S.)
- Tagline: “Love will light the way.”
Cast Comparison
| Role | Actor |
|---|---|
| Katie Price | Bella Thorne |
| Charlie Reed | Patrick Schwarzenegger |
| Jack Price | Rob Riggle |
| Morgan | Quinn Shephard |
The Numbers
- Score: 3.8/10
- Runtime: 92 minutes
- Release Date: March 23, 2018 (U.S.)
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