The Night House review

THE NIGHT HOUSE: 

REBECCA HALL GIVES A POWERHOUSE PERFORMANCE IN THIS SPINE-TINGLING AND COMPLETELY BONKERS THRILLER!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** ½ out of 4

SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

Rebecca Hall in The Night House

 

            Rebecca Hall (The Prestige, The Gift, Godzilla VS Kong) unleashes her “Sixth Sense” in a spooky lil’ house in The Night House, the new horror film directed by David Bruckner (The Signal, V/H/S (Amateur Night Segment), The Ritual). In an era where gory, slasher films and installment of The Conjuring Universe are the big horror movie moneymakers, it’s refreshing to see a horror movie or thriller that doesn’t just rehash what’s popular about the genre and brings a unique, original, and suspenseful vision to the screen, this is one of those films. 

            The Night House is a film that plays around with dreams, illusions, and…well, the audience’s expectations of these types of films and in my opinion, could go down as a new horror movie classic (or cult classic). I’ve seen ads for the new Candyman movie (Which I’m reviewing later on) everywhere and I already watched one of the best horror films of the year and it didn’t have much of a marketing campaign. 

            The best way I can describe it is like a mix between The Haunting, Hereditary, The Sixth Sense, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Sounds odd, I know!) and is one of those horror movies where it’s scarier when you don’t see anything rather than when you do without relying on excessive gore and even the jump scares feel warranted (Which is something I can’t stand in modern horror!), it’s more about atmosphere and subtle chills instead of slasher violence or ghosts saying “Boo!”. 

            The film follows Beth (Hall), a woman who’s reeling from the unexpected death of her husband and is now left alone in the lakeside home he built for them. However, despite her best efforts to keep it together, creepy things start to occur in the house as this lakeside house suddenly turns into a living nightmare, with a disturbing, ghostly presence in the house that calls to her. 

            Desperate for answers, Beth begins digging through her husband’s past and discovers shocking and terrifying secrets about not just her house, but her husband as well. 

            The film also stars Sarah Goldberg (Gambit, The Hummingbird Project, The Report) as Claire, Stacy Martin (Nymphomaniac, High-Rise, Vox Lux) as Madelyne, Evan Jonigkeit (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Bone Tomahawk, Easy) as Owen, and Vondie Curtis-Hall (Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Daredevil(TV series)) as Mel. 

            Overall, The Night House offers a well-crafted and spine-tingling thriller that works on an emotional level as well as an intellectual one with some genuinely chilling, almost Hitchcockian moments, and a powerhouse performance by Rebecca Hall at the center of it all. This film really showcases Hall’s capabilities as an actress and does an excellent job balancing between someone who is lost and frightened and someone who is slowly losing their mind, it really kills me that horror movie actors don’t get much award attention because there have been so many phenomenal performances by actresses in horror films recently, Samara Weaving from Ready or Not, Elisabeth Moss in The Invisible Man, both Lupita Nyong’o performances from Us, Toni Collette from Hereditary, and Rebecca Hall in this movie, it really shows that horror films and thrillers have changed a lot over the years with more compelling characters in them that aren’t just there to be annoying and die. 

Despite not being onscreen that much (if not at all), you feel a strong connection between Hall and her deceased husband. In the beginning of the film when you see Hall trying to get over his loss, it’s quite heartbreaking and you don’t even see them together aside from a few flashbacks, not once did I feel like Hall was just acting, I was fully convinced I was watching a woman who just lost her spouse and that I need to watch Rebecca Hall in more stuff. 

What I really appreciate about this film is that it’s not always clear that what’s happening in the house is real or if it’s all in Beth’s head. It doesn’t just do a bunch of fake-out dream sequences or Nightmare on Elm Street stuff, the film plays around with dreams and illusions, one minute you hear a bunch of loud banging or knocking, the next everything is suddenly backwards (That’s where the Benjamin Button comparison comes in!) or the rooms are changing, and they never cut to Beth waking up in her bed screaming like a lot of horror movies do, instead she wakes up on the floor of the house which adds a little more to the mystery. 

I also like how with all the spooky things going on in the house, you never really see what the ghost looks like which granted has been done before in The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, but this film finds a very clever way around that by showing a bunch of pathways in the house that resemble the silhouette of a person and having it move its head to face Beth or something like that. I thought it was an ingenious way to show the ghost but also not show it at the same time, it’s a lot more effective and frightening than most ghosts in modern horror films. 

The film also plays around with what audiences expect out of scary movies, as it was going, I was piecing together the route I thought the movie was going to take, but it often threw me for a loop by going a completely different direction. I thought something involving one of the supporting characters was going to happen, but it didn’t, and later on in the film, Beth finds this statue of a person killed in a very gruesome way and I thought one of the characters was going to end up in that exact predicament, never happened, all throughout the film I had no idea where it was going to go and by the end I felt like I just completed some bizarre spiritual journey and needed a breath. 

For those looking for a traditional horror movie with a lot of creepy imagery and slasher violence, this may not be the movie for you. If you’re going in expecting a Conjuring-style scary movie, it’s not that kind of film, there are hints of it here and there, but it’s more about the atmosphere and the main character, but if you’re looking for a refreshing departure from typical horror movie fare, then stop by this creepy lake house as soon as possible, in fact do a double-feature with the new Candyman, see the horror blockbuster followed by this smaller but very effective thriller.