I'd heard of this film purely from a visual invention standpoint, so I was surprised and perhaps unprepared for it to be such a psychologically heavy drama. Not in a bad way, but the movie was more serious than I expected.
Beth recently lost her husband to an out-of-nowhere suicide, and her coping seems worrisome and maladaptive to others as she shows a lot of bitterness and unsettling candor about the dark event. She doesn't even seem to be mournful for much of the story, but clearly things are getting to her. What makes things worse is the way she starts having waking nightmares of absent presences in her house and starts uncovering very suspicious activities from her husband's past.
In terms of horror, the film is inventive. It turns "nothing" into a something that can haunt somebody by using intriguing negative-space illusions where the architecture forms the humanoid silhouette of the invisible presence before the silhouette moves and distorts the architecture. The film also uses frequent mirror imagery as we discover an element of a second house constructed as a mirror and serving as an occultist labyrinth for the entity, meaning the film can get ambiguous about which side of the glass we're on— though, fortunately, not in a way that affects continuity. Beth is the same person the whole time.
The rest of the film is a stark allegory about nihilism, depression, suicide, and all of their infectious qualities. The protagonist is driven by a belief there is nothing after death due to a near-death experience, and after her husband seems to concur in his suicide note, Beth heads ever closer to the precipice. The force she faces is emblematic of apathy caused by both nihilism and clinical depression and the terror gets very real and personal as we both understand Beth's frustration and her friends' obvious terror for her safety. The film makes a chilling chronicle of someone's journey toward this end, and it can be difficult to watch if you or someone you know has been on that path. This is not an easy-viewing film, but it says important things about mental health and the damage that trauma and apathy can cause.
The Night House is a really well-acted, intriguing, and visually compelling film, but you need to be able to handle its exploration of suicidal ideation in order to be okay watching it.
Malice through the looking-glass.
I'd heard of this film purely from a visual invention standpoint, so I was surprised and perhaps unprepared for it to be such a psychologically heavy drama. Not in a bad way, but the movie was more serious than I expected.
Beth recently lost her husband to an out-of-nowhere suicide, and her coping seems worrisome and maladaptive to others as she shows a lot of bitterness and unsettling candor about the dark event. She doesn't even seem to be mournful for much of the story, but clearly things are getting to her. What makes things worse is the way she starts having waking nightmares of absent presences in her house and starts uncovering very suspicious activities from her husband's past.
In terms of horror, the film is inventive. It turns "nothing" into a something that can haunt somebody by using intriguing negative-space illusions where the architecture forms the humanoid silhouette of the invisible presence before the silhouette moves and distorts the architecture. The film also uses frequent mirror imagery as we discover an element of a second house constructed as a mirror and serving as an occultist labyrinth for the entity, meaning the film can get ambiguous about which side of the glass we're on— though, fortunately, not in a way that affects continuity. Beth is the same person the whole time.
The rest of the film is a stark allegory about nihilism, depression, suicide, and all of their infectious qualities. The protagonist is driven by a belief there is nothing after death due to a near-death experience, and after her husband seems to concur in his suicide note, Beth heads ever closer to the precipice. The force she faces is emblematic of apathy caused by both nihilism and clinical depression and the terror gets very real and personal as we both understand Beth's frustration and her friends' obvious terror for her safety. The film makes a chilling chronicle of someone's journey toward this end, and it can be difficult to watch if you or someone you know has been on that path. This is not an easy-viewing film, but it says important things about mental health and the damage that trauma and apathy can cause.
The Night House is a really well-acted, intriguing, and visually compelling film, but you need to be able to handle its exploration of suicidal ideation in order to be okay watching it.