The Night House will hit theaters on Aug. 20.
The Night House may not always pay off its tension in satisfying ways, but the way it builds and holds that tension makes for a gripping experience. Led by a stellar performance from Rebecca Hall as a woman reeling from the loss of her husband, the film has an eerie, metaphysical bent and an occasionally dreamlike feel, as it captures the slow unraveling of a grief-stricken mind.
Filmmaker David Brucker introduces us to a damp, lonely environment, using little more than empty spaces where it feels like people should be. Before we meet high school teacher Beth (Hall), we meet her fancy lakeside duplex, where most of the film is set, and where her husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) recently took his own life. His death was unexpected, and while he left a note for Beth, she can’t make much sense of it. She spends her days trying to keep her head above water and get back to life as usual, though the camera often catches hints of chairs and other foreground objects out of focus, obscuring her, as if she’s drowning in her environment.
After sunset, things begin to go bump in the night, and Beth starts to hear and see things that may or may not be there. The mystery of her husband’s sudden suicide makes this presence feel both welcome and unsettling. If Owen has really lingered on somehow, she may be able to find some semblance of closure, or at the very least, a good night’s sleep. Time has begun to slip away from her. She now sleepwalks — the way Owen used to.
Initially, the film maintains an air of ambiguity about whether Beth’s experiences are real or a coping mechanism; her best friend Claire (Sarah Goldberg) and her neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall) are certainly worried for her health. Regardless of what the answer is, Beth knows what she wants it to be. However, her approach to the supposedly supernatural presence changes dramatically when she begins searching through Owen’s phone and his old notebooks. What she finds only leads to more questions. Before long, Beth’s days and nights start to blend together, and become connected by haunting dreams and visions of a secret world Owen built and kept out of view.
The film’s real horror emanates from the idea that even after 14 years of marriage, and sharing a home, Beth may not have known who Owen truly was. As the possibility of closure slips further out of reach, Beth spirals down an obsessive rabbit hole of speculation, about other women in Owen’s life, about the reasons he killed himself, and about whether she had an unintentional hand in his demise. An equally unsettling notion emerges when Beth’s friends point out the ways she and Owen became increasingly similar over time, as if they had become reflections of one another. After a while, their problems may have begun to overlap and infect each other, the way an unhealthy (though completely normal seeming) relationship can be a ticking time bomb or a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Hall’s performance is powerful and measured. She creates an intriguing emotional journey for Beth by capturing the unpredictable nature of grief, and the ways it can suddenly pierce even the most mundane interactions. What she does with the role as the story goes on is utterly delightful. She peppers surprisingly humorous (though completely fitting) moments atop the film’s emotional mystery, which make it feel more recognizably human. However, what truly sells this mystery is the film’s use of negative space. Bruckner and cinematographer Elisha Christian make emptiness feel aggressive, and almost dangerous. They create alternating pools of light and darkness as Beth moves about her house, and they frame pillars and household objects in ways that play tricks on the mind. Their unusual use of focus also makes the eye wander towards empty parts of the frame that only make sense if there’s someone standing there. Some of this trickery is also the work of the visual effects team, but the result is chilling all the same, as even nothingness is made to resemble something familiar.
However, despite skillfully building in intensity, the film occasionally lets its tension dissipate, instead of either keeping the viewer immersed within it or paying it off with something frightening or thrilling (despite the best efforts of composer Ben Lovett, whose work here is suitably jagged). The story is by no means a puzzle box, so the fact that it’s easy to figure out isn’t really a problem — not when Hall’s performance is so consistently enticing. However, there comes a point where the film’s abstract visions become literal enough that viewers will have no trouble putting two and two together, which can lead to mild frustration as Beth takes her time catching up; moments of discovery that ought to feel sudden and horrifying end up feeling inevitable. When the film does seek to provide answers, even abstract ones, the result feels slightly muddled — not because the pieces don’t line up logistically, but because they seem to uncomplicate Beth’s feelings about what she discovers. This issue might be temporary, but it occurs during a vital climactic sequence where things ought to make emotional sense.
The Night House weaves its metaphors for depression and marital infidelity into something occasionally resembling a giallo, and while it never goes all-out with its hints of colorful stylization, it does feature a few surprising moments of spiritually tinged sensuality. Ultimately, it’s a standard Hollywood horror film that frequently threatens to break out into something more operatic. It never fully does, but it prods at its own aesthetic boundaries enough times that these attempts — whether failed or restrained — make it visually and emotionally engaging.