The Night House (2021) Searchlight/Horror-Thriller RT: 108 minutes Rated R (some violence/disturbing images, language including some sexual references) Director: David Bruckner Screenplay: Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski Music: Ben Lovett Cinematography: Elisha Christian Release date: August 20, 2021 (US) Cast: Rebecca Hall, Sarah Goldberg, Evan Jonigkeit, Stacy Martin, Vondie Curtis-Hall, David Abeles, Christina Jackson, Patrick Klein, Jacob Garrett White, Samantha Buck, Laura Austin. Box Office: $7.1M (US)
Rating: **
A few weeks ago, I criticized M. Night Shyamalan’s latest horror-thriller Old for overexplaining itself. The Night House, directed by David Bruckner (The Ritual), doesn’t explain itself enough. I left the theater feeling confused. Did I miss something? I get all the stuff about the ghosts leading the protagonist to a shocking secret about her recently deceased husband, but I don’t understand how the alternate mirror-image reality ties in. A plausible theory still eludes me even after I took the time to sleep on it.
Rebecca Hall (Godzilla vs. Kong) plays Beth, a teacher coping with grief following the unexpected suicide of her husband Owen (Jonigkeit, Bone Tomahawk). She never saw it coming. One morning, he set out on the lake in their rowboat, put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Beth says she just wants to get on with her life, but her erratic behavior tells a different story. She spends her nights drinking and going through his belongings. There’s also the matter of a mysterious suicide note assuring Beth that she’s safe. Already unstable, she becomes more so when weird supernatural things start happening- e.g. ghosts, strange visions and things going bump in the night. The phenomena is connected to pictures of several women, including a young book store employee (Martin, Vox Lux), Beth finds on Owen’s phone. The women all resemble her. It all leads to a horrifying discovery about her late husband.
This is where The Night House lost me. Among Owen’s things, Beth finds a floor plan for a reverse version of their lake house. She finds such a house in the woods across the lake. Dormant by day, it comes to life at night. For whatever reason, it takes her into a mirror-image reality. As I write these words, I’m still trying to put it all together. All I can come up with is it involves the occult which isn’t much of an explanation at all. It’s more of a catch-all category used to explain that which can’t be explained by science or a faulty screenplay.
It’s one thing for a film to leave the viewer’s mind reeling. It’s quite another to leave the audience confounded. If done right, it’s fun to come up ideas and theories that might or might not explain a movie. Two perfect examples are the original Jacob’s Ladder (screw the remake!) and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. I’ve had brilliant conversations about both films. I wish I could say the same of The Night House. After a promising start, it loses its footing and stumbles around never connecting its ideas. That’s not the only problem. It’s also slow and boring. The Sixth Sense overcame that by Shyamalan throwing in a few really good jolts. Bruckner does no such thing, at least not in an effective manner. The Night House isn’t scary, suspenseful or surprising. Some of it is fairly predictable. I guessed the husband’s secret very early on. It isn’t hard to figure out if you’re paying attention.
One of the better aspects of The Night House is Hall’s performance as a grief-stricken widow trying to come to terms with her loss. She’s a fine actress in that she has credibility. She’s believable in a lot of different roles. She brings this quality to Beth whose emotional state runs the gamut from numb to fits of anger, depression, hurt and laughter. It all comes with a side of confusion from being left with questions that will go unanswered. That’s in addition to being haunted by a specter that leads her to dark places both internally and externally. To others, like colleague/bff Claire (Goldberg, Barry) and elderly neighbor Mel (Hall, Romeo + Juliet), it looks like she’s losing her already tenuous grip on reality. That’s the thing about grief. It hits everybody differently and manifests in a number of different ways. Bruckner and the writers (Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski) get this part right. They don’t build on it effectively.
There are times when you can see the good movie The Night House could have been had the makers made clearer their intentions with the plot. I’m not saying they should have spelled it out; it’s good to make the audience think. They simply needed to make the story tighter. And while there’s no lack of atmosphere, Bruckner fails to augment it with a few well-placed “BOO!” scenes. In the end, The Night House is disappointingly lame. Also, I don’t like it when a movie makes me feel stupid. I still can’t make sense of it and it’s not a good feeling. It’s just as well since I’m not inclined to think on it anymore.
