The Night House

 Top marks for setting the title credits of the movie with Richard and Linda Thompson's Cavalry Cross. Top. Marks.

 The Night House is a solid, weirder-than-it-seems horror movie from director Richard Bruckner, written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski: the same team would go on to do 2022's Hellraiser. Freed from comparison to a bona fide masterpiece, I think Night House fares a little better.

 Beth (Rebecca Hall) is a high-school teacher who's recently become a widower - her husband, she explains matter-of-factly in a hilariously awkward confrontation she has with a student's mom, rowed out to the middle of the lake in front of her house, got naked, put a gun to his mouth and... pow.
 As you might surmise from the above, Beth is not taking things well. She understandably does not give a fuck about anything, and there's a brazen abrasiveness to the character that's an absolute joy to watch. I  know people who would handle pain in a similar way, and while I wouldn't necessarily enjoy her company in real life, she makes for an awesome horror movie protagonist. That's something, incidentally, the new Hellraiser also did really well; I'm pretty sure I wrote something along these same lines for that movie's protagonist. But that one didn't have Hall, who's on another level.

 Besides her already fraught psychological state, Beth has to deal with the standard imagery for bereaved spouses. Well-worn stuff, but well-realised and relatable, too: Waking up to see an empty half of the bed, with an indentation still visible on the pillow, or the way everyone hushes when she walks into the room.
 Add to that the standard gauntlet of minor haunting stuff, because, well, this is a horror movie. Cavalry Cross is used that way, blasting out of a stereo in the middle of night. She gets waken up by the sound of a gunshot, has some nightmares, sees barefoot footprints around the house, that sort of thing.

 While cleaning out the house her husband built, going through his stuff, she runs across a few weird things that call her attention: Some drafted house plans which include a reversed, mirror-image set of plans, a couple of occult books (one of them replete with labyrinths, full of notes on how to trick otherworldly entities). A picture of her husband with a woman who looks like her, which leads Beth to find a whole raft of pictures of lookalikes. A miniature reproduction of her house across the lake.

 Beth, whose resentment, confusion, grief and acerbic wit provides her with endless reserves of what we Spanish speakers call Mala Leche (a very rude way to describe aggressive ill will, basically) picks at these threads until she unravels the secrets her husband was keeping from her. It's a pretty cool mystery, a lot more convoluted and crazy than the generic ghost story the movie sets up.
 The main problem is... well, the movie gives us enough information to work everything out before it's even halfway done. Maybe I'm too much of a horror nerd, but there were precious few surprises past a certain point.

 It's very well made, though, with an extremely original 'monster' that kind of makes this flawed movie essential. You know how horror movies use negative space to enhance tension? Well... without spoiling anything, the villain here uses it in a... different way. It's a brilliant, mind-bending conceit I'd never seen before, and Bruckner, his effects team and cinematographer Elisha Christian do a pretty great job of bringing to life. That's worth a lot.

 While the mystery doesn't surprise, it's an excellently creepy movie throughout, with a great handle on creeping dread and a sparingly used but very effective jump scares. The monster is a little too talky for my taste, and that really hurts its mystique, but other than that that and a few other minor issues is a very solid horror movie elevated by Hall's performance and one hell of a concept for the adversary.

 You know how they could have made it better, though? They should really let Cavalry Cross play all the way through. Or least until the guitar solo. #ReleaseTheThompsonCut.