La proie d'une ombre

Bon film !

Beth (Rebecca Hall) is a high school teacher whose husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) recently shot himself. She has nightmares and there are signs of a haunting. She confides in friends who tell her to let things alone. Owen was a designer and builder. He was into Caedroia, the Celtic belief of making mazes to confuse evil demons. Beth discovers pictures of women on Owen's phone, all who look like Beth. This is a mystery with limit clues that is explained in the end. I liked the idea, but they best part of the film is all the action Owen did. I think it might have worked better if the film took place with his suicide at the end. Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

I was lucky enough to see this when it premiered in Jan. 2020 in Sundance. I lived in Utah at the time and have always been a huge film fan especially horror. I saw five films at Sundance that year , all horror at their midnight section of films and none of them or anything I saw that year was scarier than the night house. Less is more , and the plot is really what stool out for me. If you love films like hereditary and it follows this is the next best of decade film for you. It's very dark in plot and goes to a rough place but man, is the ride full of scares that will leave you thinking about what happened to her husband and what happens when we die a year later. The film should get credit for how it's use of sound re-invents the jump scare , anything more would be giving away too much . Go see it in July and keep your lights on at night for weeks !

I'm blown by this horror story, I regret reading anything bad because it's way wrong! Rebecca Hall's character deals with the aftermath of her husband's suicide and is haunted with mysteries throughout. David Bruckner directed a crafty well done version of what tremendous loss is like. I absolutely loved the presence of unknown entity whenever it happens especially the epilogue is so good! I don't mean to spoil anything but I chose yes just in case. It's a shame The Night House isn't making more money cause it definitely deserves it.

If you like supernatural / psychological thrillers with give it a try. Nice Elements of the movie: >Creepy, nice, dark atmosphere. >Solid performances. >Beautiful cinematography. >Camera optical illusions (set up carefully in order to define "nothing-ness"). Spoilers follow! A complete explanation guide: Beth dies for 4 minutes when she was 17 and she sees nothing in the other side. That "nothing-ness" (that she experienced) was expecting to get her life. Think of that "nothing-ness" as the Spirit of Death (SoD from now on) or the Death or something similar (SoD: "I am what you felt when your heart stopped"). But SoD was tricked by Beth since she managed to recover. Now, it wants to reclaim her life back and comes after her (SoD's Main Objective). But since Beth is NOT the believer-type, SoD cannot interact directly with her. Quite soon Beth marries Owen (Heather: "You were married young!") Owen is a believer-type, so SoD establishes a channel with Owen in order to get Beth's life. Owen starts to sleepwalk (Beth: "A year or two after building our house...") and having weird dreams in which SoD demands from him to end Beth's life. Owen tries through occult arts to protect Beth. Reading "Caerdroia" he discovers in chapter "Decoys and Deception" a way to trick SoD ("People have sought remedies to threats posed by evil...") Such trick can be done via "Voodoo dolls at gravesites near to those afflicted... activated by contact with the intended recipient... mazes and reversed spaces to confuse dark forces". So Owen starts his plan "... by distorting the identity (i.e. Other women looking like Beth) and location (i.e. Other house like Beth's house) of the subject, pursuing spirits could be tricked by false forms of sacrifice." His plan is to trick SoD by sacrificing a woman looking like Beth in a reversed place looking like his house, as he read in "Caerdroia". Owen builts secretly that house like the one he and Beth lives, but in a reversed architecture (blueprints are discovered by Beth). He makes the voodoo doll, puts the related spell and puts it in the secret house. Then he meets women looking like Beth and he brings them to the secret house. He makes them touch the voodoo doll (i.e. Activates the channel between SoD and the woman) and he chokes them as offering to SoD. SoD is tricked but when it finds out it did not get Beth's life, it presses again Owen. Owen meets another woman like Beth, and that loop goes on for 6 times (Beth: "... half a dozen"). Thus SoD is tricked for a while (Beth: "He tricked you!", SoD: "For a while... he thought he could protect you"). At the end Owen having guilts does not kill Madelyne, the girl in the bookstore (Madelyne: "he was shaking and crying") who has been left with tender feelings and has not understood anything evil. Aware that SoD cannot hurt directly Beth, Owen kills himself and leaves behind the known note. "You are right. There is nothing. Nothing is after you. You are safe now." Note means: There is really that "nothing-ness" that you experienced when you died (i.e. The SoD) and it is after you. But now you are safe because I die, so there will be no channel existing between SoD and you (it's like saying "there is no way for you to be hurt onwards"). But unfortunately that channel is established since Beth discovers and touches the voodoo doll, although she remains a non-believer-type (you can see that during the conversation she has with Madelyne in Beth's house). SoD now can interact with her physically (touch her) and has all the potential needed to make her kill herself. Beth tricks SoD once again in the boat and does not kill herself. But SoD is there and we know as the movie ends that SoD will do anything till it gets Beth's life. _____ Hope that is clear for people who did not understand some points in the movie.

Grief, or any other stages off mental imbalance , then take a big breath and consider if youre strong enough at all to devour the frights of loss that unfold in this psychologicalsy drama called the night house. Its a dark , sad and strong story about being victimized due to suicide. The acting done by rebecca hall is pretty significant, and reading through my register of actresses that ive n in my mind , i cant find anyone that can replace her on the deeds of acting the wway she does. Do also consider that ms hall aint one of my favs, and that should be an insignia of quality if you ask me... its a story about grief after a suicide of close realations, a husband, that had no signs whatsoever to do so., the plot shows us the estranged wife searching for clue and symptoms on why. Its told in a vast amount of flashbacks, and utterly vivid nightmares that becomes so realistic at moments, and so scary to encounter, that my life as a fly on the wall got the eyes wide shut, prefering to watcth the corner of the screen jusst to avoid the scary moments that are to unfold. The dream sequences and the knots and tackles to make the strings of thread into a solid rope of a story are just ammazing, the score helps a lot, and the play of light , shadow andd reflection is superb. Its like a near death experience in your dreams, and deep long wandering in paralell universes and shadowlands that may exciste or not. A parapsychologist couldve made a 6 hour documentary just analysing the para-lelles that occuurs in this thrillerdrama. Aamazing it is, and many thoughts struck my ever so cronical depressive state of mind whiile viewing like the subject of afterlife, ghosts, parallel universe and mirror worlds. Therefore i recommend this flick pointing back to the start of this review, it might be heavy for some. The grumpy old man though might take a float in the boat without any oars whatsoever.

They took so long getting to the reveal that the ending feels completely rushed and does not provide crucial information that would have given more context to what was going on. (The "bathroom scene") did not play with the rest of the movie and was so outlandish that it completely pulled me out of the movie. She is being thrown against a wall with a mirror, so he must have some power, but still doesn't kill her, The same gun that was used by her husband and was returned (presumably loaded?) by the police?!! The audience leaves confused about what happened, why it happened, or even how it happened. "Nothing" suspended Beth in the position like the statue she found? But he couldn't kill her?? I couldn't understand why after she found the dead bodies she went back home and took a shower and still wanting to see her husband after she found out he murder a lot of women. This movie make no sense.

Well-made psychological horror flick with a great performance by Rebecca Hall. It can be considered a slow burn but I was fully invested and never bored. Very atmospheric. Lots of beautiful shots. Some effective scares. Great movie overall and I would definitely watch it again. (2 viewings, 2/7/2022, 4/21/2024)

This film start with two women talking at the doorstep, and one of the woman "Beth" went into her house scene! As turnout, this film is about Beth suffer a series of hallucination, after the death of her husband "Owen"! Entire film full of boring conversation, and annoying overuse scene! Such as, overuse of the walking scene, overuse of the sleeping scene, overuse of the dreaming scene, overuse of the waking up scene, overuse of the searching scene, overuse of the staring scene, overuse of the calling names scene, overuse of the yelling scene, overuse of the driving scene, overuse of the drinking scene, overuse of the jump scare scene, overuse of the watching video scene, overuse of the checking text message scene, overuse of the checking photo scene, overuse of the song playing at the background scene, and overuse of the changing camera angle scene! Make the film unwatchable! At the end, Beth waking up from her dream, and saved by Claire! That's it! Wasting time to watch!

Good pace, Brilliantly acted, and above all intense and genuinely creepy...... But, And this is where it looses me... Being Vague isn't intelligent. So many films these days just skip over that little part where it all comes together. Where the plot thickens. They avoid massive plot holes And just look the other way. There are whole scenes in this movie that have absolutely nothing to do with anything, they are only there to be scary and mysterious, but don't further the plot or are even explained in anyway. It's A Mystery if the Writer clearly has no idea how to end it? Would "Seven" have been a better film if we never found out "Whats in The Box"? Anticlimactic Leaving the viewer to fill in the voids is lazy storytelling. Rant over.