The Night House

Year of Release:  2021

Director:  David Bruckner

Screenplay:  Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski

Starring:  Rebecca Hall, Sarah Goldberg, Evan Jonigkeit, Stacy Martin, Vondie Cutis Hall

Running Time:  110 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Following the death of her husband Owen by suicide, Beth (Hall) is left alone in their large lakeshore house trying to put her life back together again.  As she organises her husband's possessions, Beth finds herself haunted by strange dreams, from which she wakes in different parts of the house to where she went to sleep. The drams lead to clues that Owen had been leading a secret double life.  As strange phenomenon increase, Beth becomes convinced that she is being haunted, and not just by her husband.

This is a dark, sombre supernatural mystery.  For the most part it is a slow burning, genuinely creepy, intelligent ghost story, with an intriguing mystery, however in the last twenty minutes or so it falls into more conventional horror movie territory, which while it does have some good chills, feels slightly disappointing compared to what has gone before.  The film is elevated by a fantastic performance by Rebecca Hall who is in almost every scene, and often on her own.  She gives a brittle performance as the recently widowed Beth, and doesn't really soften the edges, as she pushes away friends and family who try to reach out to her, and the mixture of grief and rage is never far from the surface, mixed with her increasing obsession over the mystery of her husband's double life.  The film frequently features her alone in this vast, but very modern house, wreathed in shadows, where you glimpse furtive darker shadows among the shadows.  It may not stand up to scrutiny, but the mystery is an involving one.  This is an above average creepy tale, which does let itself down a bit in the last twenty minutes or so, which rushes to answer all the questions, and falls victim to some silly plot contrivances, however it does have some effective special effects work, and even if the finale is a little disappointing, by then we are too involved in Beth's story not to feel invested.

Rebecca Hall in The Night House