For the last few months, I’ve mostly been watching either movies I’ve seen before a hundred times, or films that I’ve been meaning to watch forever and finally found the time or motivation to do so. The key exception was Prey of this year, but I’ve been slowly making my way through the collection of films on streaming services that have been on my to-watch list. One in particular was a recommendation from some horror fans called The Night House. They didn’t tell me anything other than it was a movie in which a woman finds a mysterious note from her husband posthumously. Sounded interesting enough to me.

Pros

Special effects are used sparingly and work well with the cinematography
Decent acting from the small cast
An interesting mystery that strings the viewer for the majority of the film
Good spooky moments with a minimalist approach
Believable characters

Cons

Ending is a little too ambiguous in the sense that things are not really resolved
Plot requires a fair amount of disbelief suspended

Plot & Thoughts

Beth (Rebecca Hall) is a teacher dealing with the sudden and shocking suicide of her husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit). She didn’t know what was wrong or why he had done it. All she has left to point her in any direction is a mysterious note he left her telling her that “Nothing is after you; You’re safe now.” There’s no depressed confession or anything, just this statement that raises more questions than answers. Her friend Claire (Sarah Goldberg) and neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall) are both concerned about Beth and her mental condition due to the stress of everything. They have their own suspicions about the situation and understand that it’s extremely odd, but they clearly are not convinced of everything Beth seems to think as she explains things to them that she finds and continues to investigate into her husband’s death.

As Beth goes deeper down the rabbit hole of hunting for the reasons why Owen killed himself, she finds more mysterious and condemning evidence that adds to everyone’s suspicions that Beth is about to crack. She has dreams where she thinks she sees a ghost or the presence of her husband, then wakes up in another place. She sees a house that looks similar to her own, which her husband had designed and built himself, as though she were in another dimension. As things get more dramatic, the ghostly encounters get more aggressive and it’s not clear how much of it is real and how much of it is Beth trying to cope with the situation.

The key strength of The Night House is its use of the unreliable narrator. Rebecca Hall plays Beth well as a smart person who is just trying her best to deal with things however she can, but as soon as she finds something that piques her interest as potentially a clue about Owen’s death, she’s determined to find out more. She is established early in the film to be a strong-willed/stubborn woman in terms of her personality. This becomes far more prevalent later in the movie, but the first instance that made me think this was how she shows up to work at her school a mere few days after her husband’s death. The sudden death of a loved one would be enough to make anyone not feel like showing up for work the next week, let alone a suicide in which the note left behind made you more confused as to why it happened. If someone showed up for work a week after their spouse’s suicide, wouldn’t you be a bit skeptical of their emotional stability?

What she eventually finds would certainly make a sane person question their reality, if not their own judgment of character. We as the audience get to go through the process of Beth realizing that she didn’t know who her husband was or what he was up to, which is another discovery that would shake the foundation of anyone’s understanding of the world in which they live. Add on the fact that she keeps waking up in different rooms after strange nightmares, there is no way that we as an audience can completely rely on her perspective.

Thus, The Night House is a psychological horror film that uses the unreliability of its protagonist to its advantage. However, it’s also still a supernatural ghost story in some ways. While we can certainly claim that a lot of what we see depends on the sanity of Beth, it’s never quite clear that it’s really just her. There are plenty of scenes in which we get the impression that something else, possibly sinister, is afoot.

I don’t really have much negative to say about The Night House. I think it’s well-paced, well-acted, and well-shot. The only significant downside is that when it is revealed what really happened between Beth and Owen and how that all culminates in the end, it doesn’t really make the most amount of sense. You have to just sort of accept what the movie is telling you has happened. Even if you do, though, that doesn’t really change the resolution of the film. The ending is left somewhat open and, while certain conflicts are resolved, there’s still plenty left on the table.

TL;DR

I enjoyed my time with The Night House. It was a pleasant surprise for a modern horror movie to exceed my expectations when my expectations were not so low that I might break my back trying to pick them up. It’s a pretty film with some solid acting by Rebecca Hall and a genuinely intriguing mystery. The ending is a little unsatisfying, but the film worked well overall. Give it a watch.

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