THE NIGHT HOUSE
Rebecca Hall, plus Rebecca Sitting Room and Rebecca Loft Conversion.
Things don’t just go bump in the night in this haunted-house spooker: they leave messages in mirrors, footprints on jetties and switch on the radio at ear-splitting volume. No wonder teacher Beth (Rebecca Hall) is at her wits’ end, her architect husband’s suicide being only the start of her torments in David Bruckner’s (2017’s The Ritual) creepy spin on familiar horror tropes.
With her own history of depression and near-death experiences, our frazzled hero could do without discovering the late Owen’s secret peccadilloes: “shameful urges” that included an interest in black magic and an unhealthy fascination with women who share his spouse’s features.
One of the latter (Stacy Martin) helpfully offers clues to a puzzle that recalls The Sixth Sense and Hereditary, en route to a climax that will undoubtedly remind viewers of 2020’s The Invisible Man. That’s another way of saying
there isn’t a great deal that’s fresh in a film that’s consistently watchable but ultimately feels as schematic as one of Owen’s structural blueprints.
It’s uncommon, though, to have a lead as prickly as Hall’s protagonist, a widow whose grief has left her bitter, defensive and boozily temperamental. You’ll root for Beth, but you won’t particularly like her: an unusual proposition that, together with Hall’s courageous turn, makes The Night House a little more intriguing than your standard chiller fare. Neil Smith