The Honeycut: ‘The Night House’ walks the line between mysterious and pretentious

A Home by the Lake

The pandemic and lockdowns of 2020 really screwed up the movie business. “The Night House” was shot in 2019, had its festival premiere in early 2020, then didn’t hit theaters until summer 2021. Which is probably part of the reason I’d never heard of this film. 

When my co-host on the “Midnight Terrors Podcast,” Kevin, chose to cover “The Night House” this week on the show, I wasn’t sure what to expect. After reading the description, it sounded pretty good. 

So, is “The Night House” an overlooked masterpiece? Or does it deserve to be left back in 2020? 

The Story

The movie follows a grieving widow, Beth, after her husband, Owen, takes their boat out on the lake and shoots himself. Trouble begins brewing when she starts going through his stuff, as girls do, and finds some disturbing secrets he was keeping from her. 

Basically, he was killing women who looked like Beth, as a sacrifice to a dark entity, to keep it from taking her. Beth had a near-death experience a while ago and this evil presence has wanted her back ever since. Pretty intriguing stuff, if I do say so. 

Honey’s Cut

I’m still conflicted about “The Night House.” The first act is really solid, showing Beth dealing with the aftermath of Owen’s suicide.  We also see some decent scenes of her house being haunted. I give the atmosphere alone a chef’s kiss. The isolated lake house. The night scenes with the thick fog. The blood moon. Bravo, movie. The second act is where it started to drag a bit for me. But then the third act gets back on track. Then the conclusion… hmm. 

Let’s talk about the second act. Throughout the first part, with the setup and the hauntings, I was able to figure out Owen was murdering women. But the midpoint goes off into this side story, with a throwaway character we’re meant to think he was having an affair with and not actually killing people. I’ll give the attempt at a misdirect props. But if you were paying attention to the subtlety of this movie, it’s pretty clear what is actually going on, and this section felt like a waste of time. 

A better use of this time would have been digging into why Owen built a reversed replica of their house in the woods. He created it as a Celtic folklore maze, designed to trap the evil entity, which is why he killed the look-alike women in it. At least that’s what Wikipedia said. 

The third act is where it all comes together. Beth discovers the bodies in the reverse house and has a battle of wills with the evil entity. As it is about to make her kill herself on the same boat her husband used, Beth’s friends show up and she… realizes she wants to live? This abrupt climax felt flat to me. 

Then we get a final shot of the boat on the lake, and you can almost make out a figure in it, showing the entity is still there. Is it there because death is always close and we live our lives anyway? Or is it because it is still watching her, waiting for her to return? 

Honey’s Final Thought

Not everything in a horror movie needs to be explained. The mystery is part of what makes the horror scary. I don’t need a dissertation on how or why ghosts and demons exist. However, if you explain nothing? Well then it just feels like I watched a bunch of scenes and you didn’t really tell a story. 

“The Night House” really walks this line. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good movie, with a coherent plot and amazing acting. I think if it had explained a little bit more of what Owen was trying to accomplish, and the legend behind it, it would have been even better. 

Everything I said about the reverse house in the woods, the Celtic maze designed to trap spirits, I had to look up. That seems like something that should have at least been mentioned. Instead, we get this weird red herring about a possible affair. 

All that aside, at its core, “The Night House” is a movie about a man who did whatever it took to protect someone he loved. And maybe that’s all that needs to be explained.