The Night House (2022) - Movie Review

Jan 6

What do you get when you take a superb lead actress and drop her into a haunted house that may or may not have a demon and/or serial killer roaming about?

An extremely underrated film, that’s what.

This movie blew me away, not only as a viewer—but as an artist. This film uses the basic techniques of art theory as its monster and it’s incredible. I have trained as an artist since I was 5 years old. I was that little kid in the adult art classes over the summers that made you uncomfortable in your elective life drawing classes. I learned the ins and outs of design, oil painting, sculpture, and typography from some of the top professionals in the country both in school and out of it. The only scholarship I received out of high school was an artist grant—which I declined.

My rampant drug use and plan of killing myself at 21 played a heavy hand in that.

Don’t worry—I’m all good now.

Medication is a wonderful thing.

However, my life as an artist never faltered. Currently I’m preparing to submit my new portfolio to a couple of galleries which have expressed interest in my work (seen on my Instagram @filthyhorrorsdotcom).

As an artist, I’m often disappointed in the current film industry in the US. We truly are a country of quantity over quality. Whether it’s club stores with faulty Black Friday electronics piled up in the aisles or the fact that you can’t by spices in any size other than “I’m going to just end up throwing 90% of this away in a few months” sizes. Our country is all about consuming. Look at the last decade of super hero cinema and the inevitable downfall or too much too soon that’s happened.

Marvel and Disney have pumped out so many Star Wars and Marvel Products that there was no way the quality wouldn’t dip. When you turn the arts into an assembly line and value your deadline over the quality of your scripts and special effects, people will inevitably speak out.

Especially when your projects are are terrible as She-Hulk.

And yet, creativity and artistry still exists out there, it’s just few and far between.

Enter—the Night House, brought to us by writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski. You might remember those names from 2016’s Super Dark Times and 2022’s Hellraiser Remake which I reviewed here: https://www.filthyhorrors.com/blog-3/hellraiser-2022-movie-review

I know, neither of those films realized their full potential, but they were both entertaining horror films.

With the Night House, I believe both men have officially hit their stride alongside the criminally underrated director of Southbound and The Ritual—David Bruckner.

The film focuses on the recently widowed Beth, played by the incredible Rebecca Hall as she begins her grieving process following the suicide of her husband, Owen. The shock of his death is overrode by a guilt that maybe her dark influence and her depression was somehow contagious as Owen was a man of constant optimism and positivity. Yet, when Beth begins to go through Owen’s things to try to explain why he ended his life, she finds images of other women. At the same time, she begins to feel a presence. There are knocks at the door in the dead of night, whispers in the fog, and the caress of the unseen. A force is with her, but who or what it may be is beyond her understanding. Will she uncover the mystery behind her husband’s cryptic death or will she follow him across the lake to The Night House?

If I could only use one word to describe this movie, it would be: TENSE.

This is a slow burn film through and through. It mixes the sub-genres of Haunted House, Possession, and Serial Killer thrillers in a masterful web of ambiguous horror. That works because the two leads of the film play off one another so well.

The leads being Rebecca Hall and the house her character resides within. The house is a marvel of architecture and the Chef’s Table level Cinematography by Elisha Christian gives the building a life of its own. The bleak location in upstate New York that the film was set was also a masterful choice. This film is gorgeous to look at. The crystal clear image and bright colors add to the bleakness of Beth’s circumstances.

The special effects are also top notch. Yes, cgi is used, but it’s done in a way that will stand the test of time. Simple visual tricks are used, things as old as cinema itself—but they still work.

I’m hesitant to say much more, as I don’t want to spoil the film, but please go watch this movie and then come back for:

SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRS

This film dwells in ambiguity. Was Owen a faithful husband, or was he a cheating scumbag.

Was he killing these girls to save his wife, or was he just a deluded serial killer.

Is the haunting real, is the voice in the darkness truly the nothing that’s after Beth? Or is it just a symptom of her grief which exacerbated her pre-existing mental illness?

I love movies like this.

When the movie ended, Leslie and I had to talk it out. This isn’t a movie that gives you answers. It gives you the pieces to build your own answer.

Here’s what I think.

I think Beth’s hypothesis was right. Mental illness and the tendencies of a mentally ill spouse / loved one can rub off on you. Being someone who has battled with mental illness my entire life, I can attest that my negative charisma in my dark times has often affected those around me. I didn’t understand this when I was younger, but as I have no friends left from those times, it became really obvious.

Hence—I sought treatment and counseling and got that shit sorted.

But when it comes to Beth, I think the twist is that she caught Owen’s psychosis. Her depression and her alcoholism were a stressor on his blessed life. It’s emphasized in the film that Owen never really faced challenges like Beth did. he came from a happy home life, he was a wealthy / successful architect from minute one of graduating from university. Then he married a woman who had previously tried to take her own life. Someone who’d lived a life of struggle. She’s a public high-school teacher in New York for Chrissakes. She broke him, not intentionally or maliciously.

I’m not blaming her—hear me out.

What I mean to say is that Owen was used to the silver spoon. Everything is fine, everything is fixable—because he’s a white male 1%.

I grew up with a lot of trust fund kids in Scottsdale, Arizona. I’ve met this type again and again.

They are so used to a life without difficulty, that the simplest things become high drama.

This is Owen. He’s married to a beautiful woman that he loves and he thinks he can find a way to fix her, but everything he tries fails. Finally, after building her dream house for her, and seeing that nothing’s changed—his mind fractures. He invents the Nothingness, an imaginary villain to explain why he failed to fix his wife and through the nothingness, he begins violently killing women who look nearly identical to her.

It sounds wild, but when you read about killers like Ted Bundy, it’s extremely common. Bundy’s killing escalated once her was dumped by his college girlfriend. She didn’t think he was worthy of her as he was going nowhere fast in school or in a career. Thus, he began killing women—all of which resembled his former lover. In killing these women, he was proving he was more powerful than them and the girl who looked down her nose at him.

Similarly, Owen killed all of these women—dozens—and justified it by blaming his wife’s depression—her Nothingness. The darkness inside her gave him an excuse to kill.

As Beth realized what Owen had done and her mind linked up all the clues, many of which she had seen while he was still alive—she saw visions of what he had done. She in turn tried to justify it by grabbing onto his delusion and fabricating the attacks within the house to cope with the fact that her perfect husband was in fact a monster.

In the end, she talks to the nothingness and it looks just like her husband—because it is him. Owen was the monster the entire time. He hated her. He hated that he couldn’t fix her. He hated that their life wasn’t a perfect storybook romance. He hated that his wife worked, when there was no financial reason for her to continue to do so.

His darkness was the true beast and it devoured him—and nearly did the same to Beth, until she came to in that boat. I believe the final look she takes out to the boat at the end is her letting go of all of it. She lets go of her grief, her guild, and most importantly—her husbands demons.

You’ve gotta check this one out. It’s fantastic.

It’s currently streaming on HBO MAX.

Zachary strupp https://www.filthyhorrors.com

The Night House (2022) - Movie Review

The Empty Man (2020) - Movie Review

Best Movies Reviewed 2023 - Editorial