A widow begins to uncover her recently deceased husband’s disturbing secrets.
Director David Bruckner excels at delivering extremely uncomfortable dread throughout his films. His segment of “V/H/S” was probably the best part of the entire movie and he delivered the thrills and scares again in his 2017 outing, “The Ritual,” about a group of friends who discover an evil presence deep within a Swedish forest. With “The Night House,” he sets out to accomplish what he does best and succeeds, menacingly so.
Rebecca Hall stars as Beth, a high school teacher whose architect husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) recently killed himself, leaving her alone in the lakeside home he built for them. In the beginning, she is overcome with grief and disbelief that he is no longer in her life but gradually, she begins to experience strange goings-on; a thump on the floor, a knock on the door, a whisper in her ear, a mysterious text message from his phone in the middle of the night but when she checks it the next day, there is no record of it ever existing, either on his phone or on hers.
Going through some of his old plans and designs for the house, she comes across drawings of their home but with everything in reverse. During the night, Beth wanders around the house, seeking out the strange noises and whispers that haunt her every waking moment once the sun goes down and one night, she sees a light coming from a house directly across the lake from her, but when she goes to investigate it the next morning, there is no house. Perturbed, she starts going through Owen’s laptop and finds photos of many different women, all of them resembling her physical appearance.
Convinced he was having affairs with multiple women, her nightmares become more and more disturbing, with violent images of him and the women she saw on his laptop, in their very own home. Adamant that their mirror house does indeed exist, she sets out for the other side of the lake once more and ventures deeper into the woods, only to realize her worst fears; a dilapidated old house identical to hers. As she searches the empty old building, she unearths a gruesome revelation that forces her to quickly make her way back to her home but when the voice she has been hearing reveals itself to her, she must finally confront the entity, realizing that it has been in her life long before her husband’s suicide.
At times, “The Night House” is filled with agonizing tension and apprehension that lasts longer than most horror movies usually permit. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Beth is woken up by an apparent jump scare when her stereo suddenly turns on full blast, transmitting excruciatingly loud static that in most other movies would quickly subside once it has achieved its desired result but here, it continues consistently only for it to suddenly stop as quickly as it began.
What seems to be the criteria for most horror thrillers these days is that they start off effectively but seem to fall apart in the last act, and unfortunately, that is the case here. It feels like writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski started out with a great concept but once they got to the end, they ran out of ideas and wrapped everything up nice and neatly with a little bow on top. In most cases, this would take away from the film, overall, but director David Bruckner manages to keep your interest and investment in Beth so much that you are willing to overlook the somewhat disappointing finale.
Rebecca Hall steals every scene she is in, her initial grief at the loss of her husband gradually transforms into inquisitive comprehension, but once she begins to unearth his secret life, it overwhelms her disproportionately and she finds herself mournfully yearning for him to be back in her life, holding her in his arms, regressing to a time when there were no secrets between them and everything was uncomplicated. Bruckner infuses the movie with a normalcy that after a while, I found myself just wanting to watch Beth deal with her grief and come to terms with the disintegration of her old life as she prepares, whether she likes it or not, to begin a new chapter of her life.
Cinematographer Elisha Christian paints the film in a palette of red hues that become more apparent with the movie’s progression, signifying her desire to wake up from her nightmare and get on with her life. Thankfully, she foregoes the clichéd use of the irritating “shaky cam” in favor of a more old-school approach, akin to John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg’s earlier filmmaking aesthetics. Plenty of stationary, and occasional tracking shots in glorious wide angles, fill the screen and make the overall experience worthwhile. While “The Night House” may not be to everybody’s liking, it will undoubtedly leave an impression on you, whether you like it or not.
Opens in theaters Friday, August 20th
