The Big Picture
The Night House
essentially came about from a rejected
Hellraiser
reboot pitch.
Rebecca Hall’s portrayal in the film explores grief and supernatural themes.
The movie transforms into a terrifying and unexpected twist on the concept of grief in horror.
Every now and then, you see a performance in a horror movie so riveting that you start to believe maybe this is the year the genre gets recognized with an Oscar nomination. Toni Collette certainly fell into that category with Ari Aster’s Hereditary in 2018, but the Academy failed to acknowledge her talent. A couple of years later came another horror performance that was just as excellent. Rebecca Hall starred in David Bruckner’s The Night House, but despite her acting prowess, she didn’t get any recognition either. Both superb films take a deep and terrifying look into grief, but the latter has a wallop of a twist. It was initially conceived as a Hellraiser reboot, but rather than be sucked down by a franchise which had long ago crumbled, it was allowed to be its own monster, a paralyzing fright fest with an ending you won’t see coming.
The Night House
Beth grapples with grief after her husband Owen’s suicide. Haunted by Owen’s cryptic note and eerie occurrences, she delves into a disturbing revelation about her past. As she uncovers Owen’s dark secrets, Beth confronts supernatural forces and confronts her own mortality. With her sanity at stake, Beth faces a perilous journey to unravel the truth behind Owen’s actions and confront the entity known as “Nothing.” In a battle between life and death, Beth must find the strength to defy the sinister forces threatening her existence.
Release Date August 20, 2021
Runtime 117 minutes
Writers Ben Collins , Luke Piotrowski
Tagline The truth will surface
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‘The Night House’ Was Born Out of a Failed ‘Hellraiser’ Reboot Pitch
The Night House was written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, who at the time had also penned the spinoff of V/H/S’ “Amateur Night,” Siren, Super Dark Times, and Stephanie. Their next project was going to be a big one as they attempted to bring Hellraiser back from the doldrums. The original Clive Barker film is a horror classic, but after a few mediocre sequels, the franchise eventually went straight-to-DVD, with Doug Bradley giving up the role of Pinhead, and one forgettable sequel even starring a young Henry Cavill.
Collins and Piotrowski took their shot at pitching a reboot idea, which would have recreated that original film, a story about a devilish woman named Julia (Claire Higgins) who will kill for her lover when he is resurrected, and although much of the film centers on them, we find our hero in teenage Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), who must escape the wrath of Pinhead. In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, the writers said that their Hellraiser reboot would have made Julia and not Kirsty the main character because it’s her story.
“We gave ourselves the task of finding if you could retell that story with Julia as a sympathetic figure who is drawn to this occult world through the grief of having lost her husband. And, to bring him back, she starts engaging with these dark things and goes to these dark places through grief until it’s this
Black Swan
style, beautiful story about that character.”
Unfortunately, though, they explained how studios, “didn’t want to hear art house, dreamy, or beautiful for Hellraiser.” When their pitch was rejected, they decided to see if they could still make a script out of what they liked, explaining, “We still wanted to tell a story about somebody who’s going to dark places and finding secrets that somebody left behind. In some of the most basic broad strokes, a lot of the genesis of The Night House did come from us not being able to do Hellraiser.” During the filming of The Night House came the ultimate irony, when they found out that the producer, David S. Goyer, was working on producing a new Hellraiser movie. They cornered him and let Goyer know that they wanted a shot. It worked. After the success of The Night House, director David Bruckner reunited with Collins and Piotrowski for a reboot of Hellraiser which took the franchise back to its frightening roots.
‘The Night House’ Is a Horror Movie Centered on One Woman’s Grief
The Night House has an intriguing concept, but one that also sounds familiar on paper. Rebecca Hall plays Beth Parchin, a grieving widow trying to make sense of why her husband, Owen (Evan Jonigkeit), died by suicide. He left behind a confusing note that read, “You were right. There is nothing. Nothing is after you. You’re safe now.” What was Owen trying to tell her in the last minutes of his life? Beth can’t let go of it, and the obsession with the unknown only grows when Beth goes through Owen’s phone and finds a picture of a woman who looks so much like her. Her grief is now compounded by the knowledge that her husband was likely cheating on her. Beth is barely hanging on, mourning a man who didn’t even love her anymore.
Beth blames herself because, years before, she died for several minutes following a car crash, and when she regained consciousness, she told her husband that she saw no afterlife, and that there was nothing at all. Owen believed in an afterlife and tried to get Beth to believe as well, but he entered his own state of depression soon after. Now, as Beth begins seeing inexplicable phenomena around her home, she finds a reverse copy of her home in the woods. She sees the ghosts of Owen and other women, as her grief combines with the pain of figuring out that her husband no longer wanted her.
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The Night House dives deep into the idea of a double life by showing us a double of the house that’s like the reflection of the first, along with shots of two moons, and shadows in the house that have to be a double of something else. The house in the night is isolated, just like Beth is now in her life. Life for Beth when Owen was alive was not what it seemed, but is what she is seeing now what it appears to be, either? The Night House spends the first two acts telling you that you’re watching a movie about death, as shown by the near-death experience of Beth, the actual death of Owen, the death of his love for Beth, and so many terrifying images of ghosts. We believe this is all symbolism for Beth trying to work through death. That’s been done before, and done well, but just how does a movie about grief start off as a Hellraiser reboot?
There Is a Reason Why Grief Is a Popular Theme in Horror Movies
Grief is one of the most common theme in horror movies, no matter the subgenre. The newest Halloween trilogy from David Gordon Green deals with it as Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is unable to move on from the pain Michael Myers caused her. He killed not only her friends, but her innocent life. It’s not just slashers, but deeper films that have it, too. The Babadook is all about the loss of a spouse, with grief coming in the form of a monster. Ari Aster’s followup to Hereditary, Midsommar, is about grief as well, as Dani (Florence Pugh) tries to fight through the loss of her parents and sister. A new horror movie to keep an eye out for, The Devil’s Bath, centers on the grief of not having the life you desired. There’s a simple reason why it’s such an easy go-to for horror. Grief is the most powerful feeling, one that is all encompassing and controls our every thought and action, possessing us like an entity. It’s also something any audience member can relate to. Maybe you’ve never run into a killer in a mask or a murderous cult, but we have all experienced loss in some form and can understand how a protagonist feels.
Many scenes in The Night House are relatable for that reason. Beth can spend one scene active, working, talking to people, filled with energy, trying to discover her husband’s past, then she’s in bed barely able to move or on the brink of going mad. She is going through the stages of grief, wrapped up in a twisted ghost story. “Nothing” seems to represent that emptiness and grief, and we think we have it all figured out, but just like grief can’t be so easily understood, it becomes much darker and shocking when it gets to the end and what’s really going on. What sets The Night House apart is that this movie about grief becomes about something else in that last act.
Things aren’t what they seem to be, for both Beth and the viewer, as the “nothing” Owen speaks of becomes more understood. It’s not just grief and loss that Beth has to contend with, but a force outside her that wants her just as badly as her inner turmoil. The Night House shows us that the only thing more powerful than overwhelming grief is the incomprehensible supernatural. It takes a creation in a work of fiction to be equal to the worst of what we can experience in reality. With this, Bruckner’s film transcends its limitations and asks new questions just as powerful as those about grief. What would you do for the one you love? How far would you go to protect them? The twist is so unexpected and terrifying that you can at once understand how this started out as a Hellraiser movie, but be glad that it’s not. If you think Pinhead is a nightmare, you haven’t seen anything yet.
The Night House is available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.
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