There’s a fine line between “nightmare comedy” and “just a nightmare,” and After Hours snorts that line like it’s last call in 1985. This is Martin Scorsese’s idea of a dark screwball odyssey, and it plays like he found a Kafka short story, a handful of expired Valium, and decided to make a movie about the worst night ever to get laid in SoHo.
Griffin Dunne plays Paul Hackett, a word processor—because nothing says thrill ride like data entry—who meets a strange girl in a diner, Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), and decides to go downtown after hours for what might be sex, or a mugging, or an art show, or a public nervous breakdown. Honestly, it’s all the same by the 40-minute mark.
Paul’s night spirals out of control, and by “spirals,” I mean he trips over one random misfortune after another like a drunk pinball with no paddles. He loses his money, his dignity, and eventually his will to live, all while wandering through SoHo like a yuppie who just discovered poor people. Everyone he meets is either emotionally unstable, passively threatening, or aggressively quirky, like a David Lynch casting call at a methadone clinic.
Every time Paul knocks on a door, a new form of psychological torture answers.
There’s Cheech and Chong stealing sculptures. A neurotic ice cream truck driver. A sadomasochistic bartender. A creepy sculptor played by Linda Fiorentino (bless her; even when she’s welding plaster boobs she’s the most watchable person on screen). Everyone talks like they’re auditioning for a suicide-themed improv class. It’s like the entire population of Lower Manhattan suddenly decided tonight was the night to f*** with one guy for sport.
And Dunne’s Paul? He spends most of the film sweating profusely and looking like a raccoon caught in a ceiling fan. He’s not likable. He’s not clever. He’s just a human shrug, getting kicked around by fate and wondering how the hell a one-night stand turned into an existential hostage situation. You don’t root for him. You mostly want him to grow a spine or get hit by a cab, whichever comes first.
The film tries to be a satire—of what, exactly, is unclear. Urban decay? The absurdity of modern life? The perils of having a libido after 10 PM? It throws themes at the screen like it’s juggling knives in the dark. Everything’s frantic, everyone’s miserable, and by the end you’re not sure if you watched a comedy or just PTSD with a laugh track.
Scorsese directs like he’s doing lines between takes. The camera swoops, lunges, and stalks Paul like it’s also mad at him. The score is all moody jazz and synth stings, as if to scream, “This is ART!” whenever the script forgets to say anything coherent. And the editing? Jump cuts and zooms and frantic pans—basically a cinematic panic attack. You half expect the film reel itself to tap you on the shoulder and ask, “Hey, you okay, buddy?”
And for a movie that thinks it’s clever, After Hours sure leans hard on bad sitcom-level tension. The big running joke is that Paul can’t get back uptown. That’s it. That’s the gag. A man in one of the most densely populated cities in the world can’t catch a ride. It’s like a rejected Seinfeld subplot with a lobotomy.
There’s even a moment where he gets stuck in a plaster sculpture, like he’s being birthed backwards into hell, and you’re supposed to laugh, or cry, or maybe just accept that the universe has no meaning and this is what purgatory looks like—Griffin Dunne covered in papier-mâché, screaming for help.
By the end, Paul’s been beaten, shaved, sexually propositioned, chased by a mob, and emotionally waterboarded by every supporting character. Then he gets dumped back at work like nothing happened. Full circle. Ha ha. Life’s a joke. Kill me.
Some people call After Hours a hidden gem. They say it’s underrated. Subversive. A cult classic. That’s rich. This isn’t a cult film. It’s a cry for help in movie form. It’s the cinematic version of stepping in gum and then realizing it’s human hair.
Final Verdict:
After Hours is the arthouse version of getting food poisoning at a dinner party. It tries to be edgy, clever, and surreal, but mostly it feels like an elaborate prank played on the audience by a director who should’ve gone to bed earlier.
1.5 stars out of 5.
One star for Fiorentino because she deserves it. Half a star for the fact that nobody says, “This night can’t get any worse,” which, frankly, is the only believable thing in the entire damn movie.
