Download The Night House; movie review

 

 

THE NIGHT HOUSE

Cert 15

107 mins

BBFC advice: Contains strong supernatural threat, violence, language, sexual threat

Will somebody please switch the lights on!

Another week, another movie about a haunted house which seems bizarrely without electricity or at least light bulbs during the night.

Anyone who has nightmares knows that their residual unease melts away when we brighten the room.

However, in Hollywood, it is as if Thomas Edison never existed and, consequently, terrified characters stumble around in the dark, the prey of imaginations which can see shadows around every corner.

Thankfully, while David Bruckner's psychological horror has the formulaic darkness, it is buoyed by sparks of originality.

It stars Rebecca Hall as a college lecturer who is trying to bend her head around the violent and unexpected suicide of her husband (Evan Jonigkeit).

Initially, it seems to her best friend (Sarah Goldberg) and neighbour (Vondie Curtis-Hall) that she needs urgent counselling because she believes she has seen ghosts in her home.

But as time progresses, her obsession results in some surprising revelations about her spouse.

I'll be honest, I have grown immune to haunted house films and only the Conjuring saga tends to put the wind up me.

However, Hall does manage to engage and there are enough twists here to compensate for the usual cliches.

Sure, it is overwrought and defies belief but I guess if you are into this sort of thing you will not be too bothered about reality.

As the genre goes, it's at the better end of a bad bunch.

Reasons to watch: Superior haunted house horror

Reasons to avoid: Lots of cliches

Laughs: None

Jumps: Two

Vomit: None

Nudity: None

Overall rating: 6/10

Did you know? The Night House premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It was then withheld from release until a year and a half later due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The final word. Rebecca Hall: "To me, there was something fundamentally interesting about the idea of a woman dealing with the aftermath of a suicide of a loved one and being left with this sense of—I didn’t know that person. And if they were capable of that, what else were they capable of?" Vogue

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