Scares land like blows and weirdness is omnipresent in “The Night House,” David Bruckner’s hyper-focused and surprisingly sure follow-up to his 2018 scary wilderness, “The Ritual.”
Fully possessing each of her scenes, Rebecca Hall plays Beth, a New York schoolteacher whose 14-year-old husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) has just committed suicide. Beth now wanders around the modernist lakeside house Owen built, drinking brandy and tortured by the mystery of her death. The only obscurity in their marriage, she confesses to her best friend (Sarah Goldberg) and colleagues, was hers, the result of a traumatic experience years before.
Among Owen’s affairs, puzzling clues emerge. A frightening suicide note; architectural designs that seem to reverse the layout of their home; pictures of strange women on his phone, all of them looking like Beth. Petrifying sights and sounds haunt her nights and hazy shadows hover around her. A nice neighbor (Vondie Curtis-Hall) tries to help, but it’s clear he can’t see the bloody footprints that hang out of the couple’s rowboat and make their way home.
As the storyline teases natural explanations for these sinister events – Extreme grief? Nightmares? Mental illness? – Bruckner maintains a deadly grip on the mood of the film while his cinematographer, Elisha Christian, transforms the reflective surfaces of the house into shape-changing puzzle pieces. The end is the less daring of the possible options; but Hall is spectacular, flinty and frayed in a role that often leaves her alone and, in one frightening scene, forces her to contort in ominous ways. As Beth’s skin ripples at an invisible touch and her throat curves alarmingly backwards, Hall shows us a woman for whom terror and lust come together.
The night house
Rated R for buried bodies and lumps at night. Duration: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters.
