The Night House

Directed by David Bruckner, The Night House follows Rebecca Hall’s Beth as her ongoing efforts at coping with the sudden death of her husband (Evan Jonigkeit’s Owen) are stymied by a series of shocking, spooky discoveries. Filmmaker Bruckner, working from Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski’s screenplay, does a decent job of initially luring the viewer into the slow-burn proceedings, with the perfectly watchable atmosphere heightened by Hall’s top-notch performance and an underlying mystery that holds plenty of promise (and it doesn’t hurt, either, that Bruckner punctuates the narrative with a handful of admittedly effective jolts). It’s clear, then, that The Night House‘s downfall is triggered by an excessively deliberate and wheel-spinning midsection, as the bulk of the picture’s second act is devoted entirely to Beth’s repetitive (and increasingly tedious) efforts at figuring out just what’s going on (ie the character launches precisely the sort of generic investigation that one generally associates with movies of this ilk). There’s subsequently little doubt that the viewer can’t help but wish Bruckner would just get on with it already, which, as a result, ensures that the viewer has long-since checked out once the revelation-heavy (and absolutely interminable) climactic stretch rolls around – thus cementing The Night House‘s place as a seriously misguided and misbegotten endeavor.

* out of ****