Movie Breakdown: The Night
Pre-Screening Stance:
IFC Midnight delivered a real solid handful of quality horror films in 2020, and I’m fully expecting them to pick up right where they left off with The Night. On another note, it’s wild that this is the first US-produced film to be granted a license for theatrical release in Iran since the Iran Revolution.
Post-Screening Ramble:
Round and round The Night goes and where it stops, who the hell knows. The setup here is good – Babak (Shahab Hosseini) and his wife Neda (Niousha Noor), along with their baby, are at the end of what’s been a fun night with friends. As they’re making their way home, things get bumpy due to Babak being tipsy and their map app wigging out and pointing them every which way, so the pair decide to get a hotel room for the evening. Right away, things at the Normandie don’t exactly seem right, but that doesn’t stop them from continuing on and trying to wrap a good night turned bad.
And then? Well, I’m not entirely sure. Things certainly get heady, with the haunted hotel essentially forcing Babak and Neda into taking a difficult look at their darkest secrets, but these moments, as tense and unsettling as they are, swirl and swirl and swirl and … swirl. I kept waiting for it all to engulf me and deliver some sort of climatic crash, but the film never works itself out of a brooding hover. When it comes to making you feel like its characters do – stuck in a never-ending night of personal torment – it’s a home run, but clearly that’s both a good and bad thing. Also, The Night is a film that needs and deserves a defined resolution to its story, and there simply isn’t one.
If you like your horror served up in a real slow burn fashion (with a dash of experimentation), you should check out The Night – it has quality performances and director Kourosh Ahari flashes some talent in his feature debut. For those looking for something accessible or overtly satisfying, you may want to look elsewhere.
The film will hit VOD services this Friday, January 29.
One Last Thought:
With any horror film, I like to think about when I would go “NOPE” and then head on home, and when it comes to this one, I would have called it the moment that the front desk guy didn’t ask for a credit card during the check-in process. The only hotels that aren’t worried about payment are the kind that don’t want you to leave.
