Cinematic Releases: The Night House (2020) - Reviewed
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Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Writer-director
David Bruckner is probably best remembered for his infamous and terrifying
short segment Amateur Night from the anthological
found-footage horror film V/H/S involving
a group of friends looking for sex and debauchery who inadvertently unleash a
deadly succubus.Currently at work on a
reboot of Clive Barker’s seminal 1987 horror classic Hellraiser, the director has been working in the horror genre since
2007 with his ultraviolent cult horror debut The Signal.His latest effort
The Night House, another picture to
be delayed for almost a year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, finds the
director in familiar territory with arguably the most grief stricken psychological
and/or supernatural horror film of its kind since Ari Aster’s Hereditary.
Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Local
children’s schoolteacher Beth (Rebecca Hall) lives alone in her lake house her
late husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) built for her before unexpectedly taking his
own life.In mourning, she copes by
drowning her sorrows in booze when she isn’t lashing out during parent-teacher
conferences or dumping on her friends and neighbors.A cross and lonely woman irreparably damaged
by her husband’s death, she begins experiencing increasingly bizarre and
disturbing visions of some sort of presence in her home.Could it be Owen from beyond the grave or
something else entirely?Grappling with
her own growing hysteria and growing paranoia over just what triggered her
husband’s suicide, she starts rifling through his belongings for clues.What she uncovers about her husband’s past
and the house they lived in seems to suggest that some secrets are best left
hidden. Co-produced
by David S. Goyer and co-written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski aided by a
strong and committed central performance from Rebecca Hall who makes the widowed
Beth a tragic and at times monstrous figure, The Night House though a bit of a slowly burning puzzle of a horror
movie is overall an effective jump scare fest.Most of the film consists of Rebecca Hall in the labyrinthine and
seemingly interdimensional household as loud thuds, knockings, floors creaking
and stereos turning themselves on permeate the soundtrack.Between loud abrupt gunshots to a jump scare
that seems to scream for almost a minute, The
Night House is a psychological thriller and character study that also wants
to be a funhouse with a scary clown with an axe chasing you about.
Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
One
of the film’s great strengths are the technical merits, ranging from the scenic
as well as claustrophobic widescreen photography by Elisha Christian to
reuniting the director with his longtime musical collaborator Ben Lovett who
creates a somber, creepy and eventually frightening mood. While not all of it comes together clearly
(the third act packs one too many twists and turns), the film nevertheless
works at creating a sense of unfocused dread as we’re not sure if we’re
witnessing a genuine supernatural event or if the film’s heroine is simply
losing her mind. Partially a mystery
thriller, possibly a ghost story, The
Night House offers a new spin on the ‘things-that-go-bump-in-the-night’
subgenre of horror that doesn’t quite go as far as the aforementioned Hereditary did with its uncompromisingly
brutal shocks but in its own right comes pretty close.
