THE NIGHT HOUSE (2020)

Studio:     Fox Searchlight
Director:    David Bruckner
Writer:     Ben Collins, Luke Piotrowski
Producer:  David S. Goyer, Keith Levine, John Zois
Stars:     Rebecca Hall, Sarah Goldberg, Evan Jonigkeit, Stacy Martin, Vondie Curtis Hall

Review Score:

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Summary:

Unusual events lead a grieving widow to investigate the mysterious secrets behind her husband’s unexpected suicide.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

High school teacher Beth mourns the recent suicide of her husband Owen, who unexpectedly shot himself in a rowboat on the lake outside their remote woodland house, which Owen built. Beth begins having haunting dreams and visions of her husband. She also experiences apparent paranormal activity, including seeing bloody footprints on the dock as well as hearing strange whispers, sudden sounds, and Owen’s music inexplicably playing on a stereo during the night. While going through her husband’s belongings, Beth finds blueprints for a second version of their home with a reverse floor plan that includes the cryptic notes “trick it” and “don’t listen to it.”

In one of her visions, Beth receives a text from Owen, which leads Beth to investigate Owen’s cellphone when she wakes. Beth finds a picture of a woman who appears to be her. However, Beth becomes suspicious that the woman is actually someone else. Beth later learns Owen took pictures of multiple women who physically resemble Beth.

Beth goes out for drinks with her best friend Claire and their coworkers Gary and Heather. After telling everyone about her seemingly supernatural experiences, Beth shows the group her husband’s suicide note, which says, “You were right. There is nothing. Nothing is after you. You’re safe now.”

Claire takes Beth home. Beth tells Claire that when she was 17, she was hit by a car and died for four minutes. Beth recounts that while she was dead, she saw nothing, leading her to conclude there is no afterlife. Owen always argued against Beth’s belief, but she now thinks his suicide note was an admission that death truly is the end.

In her next dream/vision, Beth sees several women running outside and disappearing into the water. A whispering voice guides Beth to a blood-covered boat. Beth ends up entranced. When she recovers, Beth discovers she drifted in the boat to the other side of the lake where she finds a mirrored version of her house. Beth sees Owen with another woman in a window. When Beth enters the house, she wakes up back in reality.

Beth searches the woods where she found the house in her dream and finds a hidden home under construction. Inside, Beth recovers an unusual voodoo doll sculpted to look like a contorted person with large nails piercing its body.

Beth asks her neighbor Mel if he knew anything about what Owen was building. Mel admits he used to see Owen wandering around the woods at night, and once caught him with another woman. Owen later came to Mel’s house covered in blood and drunkenly babbling about finding a way to keep urges at bay, which Mel interpreted as guilt over marital infidelity.

Beth goes back through her husband’s books and reads one titled “Caerdroia.” One of the book’s pictures identifies the ‘Louvre’ doll Beth found in the secret house. Text speaks of spells to bind offerings to the artifact and also talks about mazes and reversed spaces intended to confuse or weaken dark forces.

Beth drives to the shop in Utica where Owen bought the book. Beth meets an employee named Madelyne who vaguely resembles her. Beth confronts Madelyne about having an affair with her husband, but Madelyne insists she never actually slept with Owen.

Beth tells Claire about her husband’s secret life. Beth then makes plans to finally move out of the house.

Madelyne comes to Beth’s home. Madelyne reveals she had been there before. She also says she dreamt she became Beth and then something started chasing her. Madelyne recounts how Owen took her to the secret house. Madelyne expected they would have sex, but Owen first wanted her to hold the strange doll. Owen began strangling her, but stopped when Madelyne asked him to. Owen cryptically claimed he couldn’t hold something back and now had to end it for good, which Madelyne assumed was a reference to cheating on his wife.

After Madelyne leaves, Beth returns to the hidden house. Beth finds dead bodies wrapped in plastic underneath the floorboards, prompting Beth to immediately rush back home. Beth leaves a panicked message on Claire’s voicemail.

Beth feels a presence enveloping her body. Initially assuming it to be Owen’s ghost, Beth realizes the presence is sinister.

As the invisible presence attacks her, Beth sees Owen attacking another woman in the mirror. Disoriented, Beth sees the house reversing around her. Beth flees from a shadowy figure while encountering various visions of Owen attacking other women.

In the living room, Beth confronts a vision of Owen that turns out to be the evil entity using her husband’s appearance. The entity explains it has been with Beth ever since her heart stopped when she was 17. The entity haunted Owen and influenced him into sending Beth back to it. Owen sent proxies instead, but he was unable to maintain his trickery indefinitely.

The entity contorts Beth into the voodoo doll’s shape. Beth passes out while staring at two moons in the sky. Beth enters a vision where she is with Ben in the rowboat as he prepares to shoot himself. Through Owen, the entity tells Beth she was right about there being nothing on the other side, except for the entity. The entity begins coaxing Beth into killing herself with Owen’s gun by saying, “Come back to me.”

Beth ultimately puts down the weapon and returns to reality. Having rushed over to rescue her friend, Claire gets Beth out of the boat. Mel arrives to help both women out of the water. Once everyone is back on the pier, Mel sees Beth staring at the empty rowboat, although Beth sees a shadow sitting in it.

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Review:

It happens to all of us at one time or another. It happened to me with “The Night House.”

For a different review written recently, I rhetorically asked, “How many times has festival chatter pre-pumped a production as the best thing since sliced bread, then once it went out to the public, unimpressed viewers responded with, ‘That’s all?’” I used “festival chatter” in that musing but I essentially meant any kind of anticipatory buildup, whether it comes from external influences or just expectations we inflate for ourselves.

Every number in “The Night House” belonged to an address located right up my alley. The film stars Rebecca Hall, a consistently enigmatic performer whose effortless ability to infuse everyday characters with boundless intelligence and naturalistic humanity is practically unparalleled among peers. Its director is David Bruckner, who began making a distinguishing mark in genre entertainment with his indie hit “The Signal” in 2007, but fully realized that promised potential ten years later with “The Ritual” (review here), one of the few unforgettable thrillers to ever come out of Netflix. Speaking of unforgettable thrillers from that year, “The Night House” screenwriting team of Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski also penned the coming-of-age chiller “Super Dark Times” (review here), a movie whose dread-drenched mood landed it a prime spot on my personal list of top movies for 2017.

Take that talent, tie them together with the post-Sundance heat of more than one critic hailing “The Night House” as “the best horror film of the year,” and I buckled up for what I presumed would undoubtedly be a memorably macabre experience. When I exited at the other end of a finely tuned yet relatively ordinary haunter however, I found myself asking, “That’s all?”

Funnily enough, “That’s all?” is something Rebecca Hall’s character has been wondering since she was 17. Back then, Beth was struck by a car and her heart stopped. Beth had always heard about the supposed light at the end of the afterlife’s tunnel. But during the four minutes she was dead, she only saw tunnel. After she was resuscitated, Beth’s brief brush with death led her to believe life is all there is. No Heaven. No Hell. Nothing but emptiness once our time on Earth ends.

Right now, Beth deals with a different death. Montage shots of crumpled tissues, side-by-side sinks standing empty, and a vacancy occupying one half of her bed immediately inform us this is a woman mourning the loss of her husband, Owen.

As expected, Rebecca Hall is terrific in the role. When we first meet Beth, she’s already a widow, and has barely been one for a week. Although a couple of quick home video clips come up later, we never see her and Owen together during their marriage and yet, purely through the book’s worth of reflective reverie Hall puts on her face, we fully feel the magnitude of Beth’s pain stemming from the sense that her relationship was a happy one cut tragically short. Be it a scene of depressed drunkenness or just a cold glare toward a bothersome woman at work, Hall tells complete stories with limited words, tearful expressions, and the seemingly simple ways in which she moves about maudlin mementos adorning her home.

Given the gravity of the subject matter, and casting someone of Hall’s caliber to steer the ship through emotionally heavy themes, one might think “The Night House” would more deeply develop the drama of dealing with death. The movie has increasingly less to say about loss however, as it starts slowly and solely focusing on unraveling the mystery of supernatural sights and sounds preventing Beth from sleeping peacefully. Beth can’t quite be sure if they’re waking visions or only ordinary nightmares, but Owen seems to be haunting their home. I say “seems to be,” though it shouldn’t take anyone even remotely familiar with ghost stories to put together the basics of what’s going on well before the film’s slow-burn suspense finally pays off with a demonic denouement.

Under ordinary circumstances, such as an average leading lady or under-experienced director working with an unsteady hand, “The Night House” wouldn’t register on any radars except those belonging only to the most ardent admirers of mid-level haunted house horror. Starting with the remote home in the woods where Beth lives, we’re clearly creeping about in routine fright film territory. Creaks upstairs and shadows quickly disappearing around corners. A sudden jump or two. The classic “it was actually just a nightmare” scare. Then piecemeal exposition comes courtesy of characters who only exist for that purpose, obligatory online research, and informative books uncovered at exactly the right moment in standard plot development.

Although arguably a tick on the generous side, 65/100 ends up being a fair score because, despite points deducted for predictability, “The Night House” remains an expertly crafted excursion into eeriness. Whether it’s Vondie Curtis Hall in a disposable supporting role that doesn’t matter, or cinematographer Elisha Christian carefully considering the camera’s path through a déjà vu boo, everyone on both sides of the lens is incredibly skilled at what they do.

From Bruckner and Hall to Collins and Piotrowski, they’ve all done better work before. Yet “The Night House” proves that even when they’re creatively coasting across previously paved highways, they still deliver above average entertainment. It’ll be too slow for some and too “I’ve been here before” for others. But this is one case where expectations have to be adjusted below the reputations preceding everyone in order to maximize engagement. Otherwise you’re liable to react like I did, feeling like the film was fine, yet still asking, “That’s it?”

Review Score: 65

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