Everything about a picturesque lakeside home in "The Night House" spells doom for Beth (Rebecca Hall). The house was built by her husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit), who recently took his own life in a boat on the lake. After a decade-plus of marriage, Beth remains puzzled why he would do this, or what was even going on beneath the surface to drive him to this decision. Now, she is left with the house as an artifact of days gone by, where shared memories of "remember when?" morph into dreaded reminders.
Beth is now faced with the task of packing up the house and sifting through her marriage to see if any clues were missed along the way. Owen has only been dead for about a week at the start of the movie, so, naturally, a lot of people are concerned about how Beth is holding up. She returns to school - she's a teacher -much sooner than expected, and her co-worker and friend Claire (Sarah Goldberg) tries to keep a constant eye on her. Her neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis Hall) is always willing to check on her when he knows she's at the house. As the days go on, Beth begins to feel a presence in her home and hopes it's Owen trying to communicate with her, to provide some insight into why he left her. But, of course, she's going to need to find those answers on her own.
A lot of "The Night House," directed by David Bruckner, feels like a collection of "things that go bump in the night" tricks and traps, which might prove effective depending on your tolerance - or patience - for jump scares. Where Bruckner is more successful is in creating an atmosphere filled with grief and dread, ratcheting up tension as Beth digs deeper into Owen's past and the background of their marriage. The unsettling sense of uncertainty about their history provides more unease than any slammed door or sharp note played from the film's score.
It always helps to have a remarkably gifted actress like Hall at the wheel, conveying every aspect of Beth's journey toward understanding. It's easy to slap a label like "overrated" or "underrated" on an actor, but Hall continues to be one of the most consistent actors working today, navigating a career between big budget studio films (this year's "Godzilla vs. Kong") and independent films like "Christine," which allows her to use all her power as a performer. She brings a depth and gravity to Beth, a character that could otherwise feel like an amalgamation of characters we've seen before.
Bruckner - who directs a script by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski - brings the mounting anxiety to a well-staged and shot finale, but the last act of "The Night House" starts to trip over itself by layering on a bit too much. Still, as far as ghost stories go, "The Night House" doesn't feel like it's solely relying on a familiar blueprint, and a lot of that is thanks to Hall's performance.
"The Night House" opens in theaters August 20.
The Night House Movie Review By Matthew Passantino
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