The Night House Movie Review

“The Night House” is a spooky drama with few real scares, but a slow burn of a thriller to see if ghosts exist in the main character’s mind — or in real life. Due to her husband’s recent suicide, a woman deals with supernatural troubles in her house, where things tend to go bump (or worse) in the night. Rather than do the normal thing, and LEAVE, she sticks around to unfold the mystery.

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Beth (played by Rebecca Hall) is a woman in dire straights. Her husband just committed suicide, with no apparent reason why. Owen (played by Evan Jonigkeit) was an architect who designed and built the beautiful lake house where they lived. But with one cryptic note to Beth, he was gone. Beth, a teacher, spends her final day at school with her friend Claire (played by Sarah Goldberg). Claire wants Beth to stay her family, just to get her out of the house.

Of course, Beth refuses to leave. So when odd thumps are heard in the night, Beth is alone. She investigates and finds nothing. But days go on, where things start to get even stranger. Beth gets text message, but they are Owen’s phone. Is this real, or is she only imagining things? She checks old messages and photos on his phone. She finds many of other women that mostly look a little like Beth. She also finds old blueprints, of their house, but they are reversed. And then she finds the weird statue of a woman bound and stuck with poles. Nothing to see here, folks — move along…

She is not sure if the house she sees on the opposite side of the lake really exists. She walks over there, and meets her neighbor Mel (played by Vondie Curtis-Hall). He explained that Owen was constructing ANOTHER house on the lake, but it was a reversed floor-plan. But why? Mel says that Owen was working on that other house to fight off his ‘other urges’. Beth finds an unfinished house, but also many other odd things around there. Like the statue, for example. Beth finds some books about the occult that Owen purchased. She finds the store and meets an employee named Madelyne (played by Stacy Martin). She did know Owen, but ‘nothing ever happened’, she said.

Beth is having strange ‘fugue’ states, where she is not sure if she is dreaming or awake. The stereo system plays on its own in the middle of the night. Beth thinks she sees Owen standing there, but it is an illusion of her mind – or just some furniture. Claire is more and more worried about Beth’s well-being and her mental state. She tells Claire of a time when she was much younger, and she was in a terrible accident. She says her heart stopped and she was clinically dead for minutes. I’m sure that will NOT turn out be important…

Beth finds evidence (or at least she thinks she does) that Owen was doing many nefarious deeds. But she is so confounded about her life that she doesn’t know which end is up. Beth does not want to leave. There might be a ghost of Owen around in the house that wants to tell her something. Claire would not understand, she thinks. Beth wakes and feels a presence of something, or someone. Could be Owen? Could it be the one whom she cherished the most and misses with all her heart? Or could it be a darker, deeper spirit of something more evil?

“The Night House” wants to make you think it will be a scare-fest and tension-filled horror movie. But for the most part it tells of a troubled woman and her struggles when she is left on her own. Rebecca Hall is convincing as a confused and frightened Beth. She can seem to be disarming, but can give a withering look that could peel the paint from the night house walls. She wants answers, and she might not like whatever answers that she finds. There is an uneasy feeling is all throughout the movie, which keeps you on your toes.

This is well-constructed movie (see the house analogy there!) and the tension builds until the final section. It gets into a little bit of territory covered by “The Invisible Man”. But it does it in such a clever way that it makes it OK. There are some ideas that seem to be bubbling up in the movie, but in the end – it is not quite as good as the sum of its parts. There are some fine rooms in there, but “The Night House” could use with a new coat of paint.