The Night House

Mr. Pat

12 hours ago

4 min read

I knew I wasn't alone in my dislike for Liberty Biberty, but I underestimated the hate for that little asshole. On Sunday, dozens of people gathered outside Liberty Mutual's Boston headquarters to protest the furry mascot. They made signs, chanted and demanded that Liberty Mutual retire the creature. It's all very silly, but protests in Boston started the U.S. down the road to becoming a country; maybe it can end Liberty Biberty's reign of terror as well. Transitioning now, let's discuss...

The Night House (2020)

Beth had just lost her husband, Owen, to suicide. One night while she was sleeping, he left the house, took his rowboat to the middle of the lake, got naked, and then put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The movie then deals with the fallout. Beth is trying to keep busy, she's cleaning their lakehouse, stopping by the end-of-the-year meeting at her school and going through her husband's things. His suicide note left behind is also super cryptic. "You were right. There is nothing. Nothing is after you. You're safe now."

I had an idea what it meant, and I ended up being right, but Beth takes it that he agrees with her that there's nothing after death. But depending on how you choose to read it, it can mean very different things. When she was a teenager, Beth was in a bad accident where she was clinically dead for four minutes. She says during that time, there was nothing; everything was black. Owen, however, is a believer, and Beth thinks this note is him conceding that when you die, that's it, game over, man. Game over. It's an interesting bit to add to the movie, but they don't spend too much time on it, and by the end you have to assume that they're both right, kinda?

Late one night, she starts getting texts from his phone, and when she wakes up in the morning, she sees the texts are gone. While checking his phone to see if they were real, Beth sees the texts are not there, but stumbles upon something else. There's a picture of a woman who looks strikingly like Beth. From there, she starts investigating and finds out that her husband of many years had a double life, and it involved several women that looked similar to her. On top of the investigation, we get dream sequences and some spooky shenanigans and scary moments from... something that's following her around, but it's impossible to tell what's real and what isn't.

I tried summing this movie up as best I could; what I gave you is the gist, but there's a lot going on. It is a very intriguing and engaging story. It had the potential to run off the tracks, but Rebecca Hall's performance as Beth is too enthralling. She's great as the grieving widow, because you can see the immense pains she's taking to try and keep it together, but her facial expressions say more than words ever could. Not only is she desperately trying to find out why her husband killed himself, but she's also being haunted while trying to figure out who exactly her husband was. She probably gives the best performance I've seen so far this October.

I'm struggling with how to do this review because to talk about the plot is to discuss the mystery surrounding the film. But because the mystery is the movie, talking about it too much would spoil it, and it's best enjoyed as you get answers the same time Beth does. It's cool because you get little clues that you would normally brush off, but then it pays off later. And if you forgot what those clues were, they give you a quick refresher flashback, letting you know what you missed.

As for if it's scary, it definitely has its moments. The thing that seems to be chasing her around is mostly a shadow, and it's hard to pick out at times. A lot of the time, spotting it is a matter of finding the darker shade of black in the dark room, but when it first makes its presence known is wonderful. Another feather in this movie's cap is that it doesn't rely on jump scares. It sets such an unsettling mood throughout, and the way Beth interacts with people when the hauntings aren't happening is designed to make you and the characters uncomfortable. She becomes convinced that her husband cheated on her, and it's only later that she realizes it was a lot worse than that.

There's one thing that's been sticking with me. We learn that Owen was doing horrible things, but later we learn why he's doing it, and you can understand why he does the things he does. It brings up an interesting question: how far is too far to save the woman you love?

This is one of those mysteries that keeps you engaged the entire time and sprinkles just enough horror bits in it to keep you wanting more. I enjoyed watching the movie lay out its story, dropping clues along the way until a pretty terrifying reveal. Plus, given the task of carrying the movie and being the only thing on screen for large chunks of time, Rebecca Hall owns this movie and absolutely kills it.