The Night House (2020)

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A powerful study of grief centered around a mesmerizing performance by Rebecca Hall. In the aftermath of sudden tragedy there are gaps, holes and questions that may never be answered. In these spiritual abscesses, we strive to bridge the gaps, fill the emptiness, find our answers. But how much reflects reality, and how much is our own projection? From the perspective of one wallowing in the agony of incomprehension, isolated and left in perpetual existential torment, we find our protagonist Beth. This movie illustrates a heart-wrenching degree of personal horror through excellent writing but then there are the manifestations, which are unrivaled. There are the usual hauntings:  strange sounds, invisible entities, echoes and shadows, but when Beth’s tormentor makes itself known, landscape, perspective, architecture all twist and shape themselves into moments of amazing. The visual trickery and direction involved is unsettling and haunting, and I have genuinely never seen anything quite like it. For the most part, this movie is far more psychologically unnerving than concerned with scares, there is an argument that all the portrayed events are psychological manifestations, and the ambiguity works. The coda is powerful, the statements and depiction of its subject matter utterly haunting, and this is another instance where this movie approaches exceptional in its execution. Unfortunately there are twists in the script and turns in the story that don’t quite land and plot points could use elaboration. One more rewrite on the script to tighten some elements would have catapulted this movie into the tiers exceptional, but regardless it is powerful, resonant and stunning. B+

B+