The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B-
Damn it, The Night House is so close to being a great movie. So very, very close. For about the first three quarters of this film, I was giving it an A and ready to proclaim it the best film of 2021 thus far. Then the last quarter happened and presented me with an ending so astonishing in its awfulness that I felt like I was watching a car crash in slow motion and was helpless to stop it. Featuring one of the single greatest performances that I have seen in years and some truly creepy moments, The Night House is about 80% of a classic haunted house story that will be tragically forgotten because of the truly asinine and childish final 20%.
Rebecca Hall stars as Beth, a teacher whose husband (very unexpectedly) commits suicide just prior to the start of the film. As she is the one that has struggled with depression and he has always been her emotional rock, she is left shocked and confused as she deals with the aftermath. Soon afterward, she starts getting phone calls from her husband’s phone, begins having strange visions and discovers that her husband was building a strange inverse version of their house across the lake and secretly meeting with women that look similar to her.
Foremost, I can’t give enough credit to Rebecca Hall for her performance in this film. This is one of the most layered and nuanced depictions of depression and grief ever captured on film, as Hall transitions from vulnerability to stubborn anger so fluidly that one could forget that Beth isn’t a real person. There is genuine authenticity in the flaws of the character; she isn’t stereotypically weak or a cartoonish modern embodiment of girl power. She behaves and grieves in a way that feels so real that the performance begins to feel like some sort of voyeuristic display that we shouldn’t be watching. Hall gives a performance that should be studied in a film that will likely be forgotten.
For most of its running time, the film evoked thoughts of The Changeling, the classic haunted house film starring George C. Scott. Both films depict characters grieving the loss of loved ones, both are mysteries and both depend largely on mood and atmosphere (all of the jump scares in all of the Conjuring movies combined aren’t as creepy as the simple image of a ball rolling down a flight of stairs in The Changeling). The Night House probably won’t satisfy the jump-scare crowd, but has a sense of dread and uneasiness about it that kept me engrossed in the central mystery of what exactly Beth’s husband was up to prior to his death. I came up with several theories during the film and have not been this invested in a mystery since the excellent The Kid Detective last year. I had to piss for the last hour of this film, but would not leave my seat. I wanted to see what Beth would discover next, my bladder be damned. It turns out that the piss would have been a much more satisfying experience.
I am going to SPOIL this movie because I don’t know how to convey my irritation without doing so. As I mentioned, I came up with several theories during the film. Was Beth already dead and this was like Jacob’s Ladder? Was it going the Stir of Echoes route and the ghosts of her husband’s victims are trying to communicate with her? Has Beth just lost her mind and grief has turned into paranoia? Nope, none of those. There is a reference early in the film that Beth had been in an accident and was medically dead for several minutes, and the nothingness that she experienced in those minutes turned her into an atheist (ignore the atheism bit, though, as that was too interesting to follow-up on). It turns out that a demon found her soul when she was dead and wants her back, so he had been trying to get the husband to kill her. Instead of killing her, he killed himself. The almost unfathomable lameness of this will haunt me for all my days. It throws away all of the clues and psychological subtext for a villain reveal that feels like it was ripped out of a Scooby Doo cartoon. The film switches from being a moody, atmospheric haunted house story to being a bullshit Conjuring film, disregarding psychological horror in favor of another entry in modern horror’s endless pantheon of nondescript demons. It’s a crushing waste of potential and an insult to the audience’s intelligence.
I can’t recall another filmgoing experience when I switched from loving a film to hating it so dramatically. I struggled with how much to lower the grade and I’m still not sure if I’m being generous, but Rebecca Hall’s performance alone is worth a viewing. Just turn it off with about 20 minutes left, make up your own ending and thank me later.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_House#/media/File:The_Night_House.png
