Horror Movie Review: The Night House (2020)

The Night House is a horror film directed by David Bruckner, releasing in 2020. In the aftermath of her husband’s sudden suicide, Beth discovers a dark secret about the house that her late husband built.

Beth has just lost her husband Owen to suicide. Devastated, she spends her nights drinking and going through Owen’s belongings. Owen left an ominous suicide note—”You were right. There is nothing. Nothing is after you. You’re safe now”. Beth begins to suffer from strange supernatural events at night and finds a strange reversed floor plan for their house.

One night, she discovers a photo on his phone of a woman who looks similar to her. Beth naturally suspects Owen was having an affair. That night, she is awakened by a supernatural presence and witnesses several frightened women fleeing through the woods. Also, she finds blood on the boat where Owen shot himself.

Crossing the lake to investigate a strange set of lights, she discovers a reversed copy of her and Owen’s house and sees ghostly figures of women with Owen. She passes out and awakens in her own house. With this in mind, she looks for the reversed house again and finds it. However, this time it is unfinished and empty. She retrieves a strange statue from it and confronts her neighbour Mel. He claims he never saw the house but once saw Owen in the woods at night with a woman who looked like Beth.

Searching Owen’s laptop, she finds more photos of women who look similar to her. Then, she identifies the statue from one of his books as an occult voodoo doll. Additionally, she determines that Owen was trying to learn how to trick and trap demonic entities.

The Night House ticks a lot of the right boxes. It’s clearly a well-crafted film with talented people behind it. The performances are top notch, Rebecca Hall is fantastic. Also, there’s some high quality cinematography throughout. Then, there’s the story which is nicely told and has a dark edge which is enjoyable. Sounds pretty great right? Well, no. For whatever reason, it just didn’t click for me. As well made as it is, I found it mostly very bland. The story takes a few twists and turns which led to it feeling more convoluted than was necessary. By the ending, I wasn’t even that clear on what had happened.

There were a few moments that frustrated me. One being the reveal from Beth’s neighbour Mel. I just didn’t understand why someone would keep such important information to themselves. Owen just committed suicide and Beth is clearly losing her mind. He’s aware of pivotal details that led up to Owen killing himself that I’m sure Beth and even the police would have liked to know.

Furthermore, the horror elements are lacking in The Night House. There are some moments of tension and a few creepy scenes where perspective trickery is cleverly used. I really liked the aspect involving the reverse house but it wasn’t as important as I think it should have been. I would have had things go in a completely different direction other than Owen was simply possessed by a demon…..yawn.