An Iranian couple living in the US become trapped inside a hotel when insidious events force them to face the secrets that have come between them, in a night that never ends.
Fear comes alive, not in the circumstances of an eerie night, but in the minds of the guilty in this psychological thriller, directed by Kourosh Ahari. “The Night” plays upon a classic rendition of the haunted hotel, trapping Babek Naderi (Shahab Hosseini) and Neda (Niousha Jafarian) in its historical yet fear-inducing grasps. Soon the couple discovers that the secrets in their marriage are what powers their inability to leave the hotel, where their induced fear is only a symptom of the lies and mistrust that already existed before their entrapment.
Like any other hotel horror, the film is rampant with repeating elements like the creepy front desk receptionist or the eerie emptiness of its rooms. We even witness a black cat make its way into a stereotypical omen, completed by a homeless man that yowls random misgivings and police officers that do nothing but increase tension than help the couple from their plight. A flux of shadows, curated by the lighting cinematography, sets up an uncomfortable atmosphere plagued by a tense sense of foreboding. A mysterious ethereal woman shows up to steal a baby and there is more white noise than creepy violins to accentuate the horrifying circumstances that the couple found themselves in. “The Night” is complete in its formula for horror but the highlight of the film is found in the psychological discrepancies that divide Neda and Babek from their wife and husband loyalties.
Hosseini and Jafarian play the roles of a struggling couple with accurate portrayals of fear, mistrust, anxiety, and love that is to be offered. Jafarian is an honest portrayal of the tense wife, struggling to find happiness in her circumstances because of a waning love for her husband. Hosseini, on the other hand, is in every sense, the type of patriarchal man that fails to garner the empathy needed to understand that marriage only lasts with the foundation of trust rather than of control. Their seemingly only uniting factor is their daughter, but even she is not enough to be the reminder that there are some things not worth sacrificing for over secrets.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this film is not its classic jump scares but the struggle for Neda and Babek to see eye to eye above the divisions in their marriage. A gap in time and space between Neda and Babek before their reunion in the United States reveals its deathly consequences as the couple fails to be truthful about the demons that haunt their wedding nuptials. Babek is especially resistant to revealing his infidelity to his wife during his time away from her, even after Neda reveals her harrowing decision to abort an unborn child without Babek’s knowledge. The dishonesty culminates in an open-ended tragedy, leaving the audience with a ponderance of whether it is the secrets themselves that hold power or if the secrets are given power by how desperately we try to hide them.
“The Night” is a rather young film, a good starting point to introducing more western elements of media into the culture of Iran, but it is not a film that is fully developed to incite anything more than a simple nod for its traditional horror aspects. The fatal climax is almost enough to hypnotize the audience after a series of repetitive scares, but “The Night” requires more than a shocking finish to be remembered as something more.
Available in Select Theaters and on VOD Friday, January 29th
