‘The Night House’: Film Review

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A knack for creepy atmospherics and individual scares goes a long way in the horror genre, and it takes “The Night House” pretty far. Though this tale of a new widow’s apparent haunting gets progre…

plays Beth, an upstate New York schoolteacher reeling from her husband of 14 years taking his life just a few days before we meet her. Completely blindsided by that event — particularly since as far as she knew, she was the only party in their marriage who suffered from depression — her immediate reaction is one of anger. Friends and neighbors offer support, but Beth fends them off, preferring to process bitter grief alone, with a drink or 10.

Yet while she may feel abandoned, she doesn’t actually feel alone, as disturbances begin occurring each night in the lakefront house that architect Owen built for the two of them. These take the form of poltergeist knocks when there’s nobody at the door, or the stereo turning itself on to play “their song” in the wee hours. Beth has additional nocturnal experiences that seem too real to be dreamed, yet abruptly end when she wakes to find herself having slept on the floor.

The script by duo Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski works up an initially intriguing, then muddy, finally just-not-that-interesting supernatural puzzle unlocked by a combination of demons and duplicates. It does not bear close scrutiny during “Night House,” let alone afterward. Another problem is that the usually impressive Hall emphasizes Beth’s caustic side to a degree that she’s not an especially sympathetic heroine.

Here, he provides a certain elegance but also shadowy menace to a story much dependent on the picture windows and other reflective surfaces of Beth’s home, whose openness ought to comfort yet instead offers the threat of parallel worlds. DP Elisha Christian’s widescreen images, Kathrin Eder’s sharp production design and David Marks’ canny editing are major contributors to the discomfiting atmosphere, as is Ben Lovett’s effective score.

 

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