Welcome to the Cutting Room

“The Night House” began its life as an idea for an entry in the “Hellraiser” franchise, which explains a lot (including director David Bruckner directing the 2022 “Hellraiser” installation, which is one of the best “Hellraiser” films in recent history). I believe watching it with that knowledge made it better, so I’m putting that out there. I definitely either watched or attempted to watch “The Night House” during one of my movie binges and remembered some vague details about it but it didn’t stick for whatever reason (I probably fell asleep). Here’s where the synopsis starts so be aware there will be spoilers.

Beth (Rebecca Hall, “Resurrection” which I should also give another watch) returns home from her husband’s funeral. After 14 years of marriage, Owen (Evan Jonigkeit, “Bone Tomahawk,” “The Empty Man”), the late husband, rowed himself into the middle of the lake behind their property (designed by Owen) and shot himself in the head.
Beth is coping about as well as I’d imagine anyone would, which is poorly. She tortures herself by watching their wedding video and going through Owen’s things.

After an encounter with some dickhead kid’s dickhead mom where Beth teaches (I think we’re supposed to believe she returned to work a day or so after her husband’s funeral which why the FUCK, Beth?!), she snaps a little (god forbid women have emotions ABOUT THEIR DEAD HUSBANDS) and retreats to her home, alone, which is definitely a good idea. Beth gets her drink on and her OBSESSION on. She flips through Owen’s architectural sketchbooks where we see plans that look suspiciously similar to the Lament Configuration of “Hellraiser” fame. We see a hint at an “opposite” house design and plans showing labyrinths, almost as if Owen is trying to trick or trap someone or something. Beth also finds a picture on Owen’s phone that looks suspiciously like her. Was Owen cheating? He certainly had a type. Understandably, what she finds upsets Beth and her obsession grows.

As tends to happen in movies like this, weird shit starts happening as Beth wraps herself tighter and tighter in her grief. Beth and Owen’s song blaring out of nowhere in the middle of the night, muddy footprints leading from the lake to the house, hallucinating (?!) humanoid figures, and even hearing the (distorted) voice of the late Owen. None of this is enough to convince Beth that isolating herself while she’s actively hallucinating (or is she) is a BAD IDEA apparently. On a rare jaunt out of the house, Beth goes for drinks with her coworkers. After keeping to herself for the most part, Beth hits That Level of drunk and begins to trauma dump on her coworkers. Can relate. This woman BROUGHT OWEN’S SUICIDE NOTE along to the bar, and we finally get to know what Owens final message was to beth. “You were right / there is nothing / nothing is after you / you’re safe now.” After Beth is brought home by her ride or die friend Claire (Sarah Goldberg) we get to hear some of Beth’s lore. She reveals that, after being dead for four minutes due to a horrible car accident, what she saw at death was Nothing. No angelic fanfare, no demons force feeding donuts to sinners, just Nothing. Beth insists that Owen (until now the only person to know the truth about Beth’s near death experience) was on a mission to prove the opposite to her but whomp whomp. Guess not.

Plagued by a dream (or is it) of women who all kind of look like her throwing themselves into the lake in the middle of the night, Beth sees a house identical to hers across the lake. That’s it, that’s the night house. Because it appears… at night. I think. Unclear. Some supernatural force (Ghost Owen? is that you?) knocks her out (wow rude) and sends her across the lake in the boat in which Owen took his life. Inside the identical but backwards house Beth sees a sprinkling of Bethellgangers and sees Owen assaulting them.

Back in the waking world, Beth finds WAY MORE photos of Bethellgangers on Owen’s computer in a totally healthy act of snooping as self harm. She ventures into the woods across the lake, searching in vain for the house from her dream. After learning from her understandably concerned neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall) that the land across the lake is protected and there’s no way anything could be built there, Beth continues her search and finds a sexy fetish idol in the skeleton of an unfinished house. The opposite house. Beth brings the sexy fetish idol to her poor neighbor who’s just trying to live the peaceful life of a laid back widower; Mel confesses to Beth that he once caught Owen running around in the woods with another woman at night. Owen later returned to Mel’s covered in mud or blood or both and confessed to having sinister “urges.” Understandably, Mel didn’t push the issue and Owen swore him to secrecy.

On a fun side note, the sexy fetish idol is based on an actual artifact! The “Louvre Doll,” the name it’s given in the movie, is a small figurine of Egyptian origin, which was used in rituals as part of a binding spell or love spell. Owen using the doll in his seduction/attack on the Bethellgangers seems to have exhausted its power by the time he kills himself.

Beth tracks down one of the Bethellgangers in an occult bookstore and makes her very uncomfortable (Beth’s a fucking savage and I would probably like hanging out with her). Claire, Beth’s best friend, tells Beth to stay with her for a time while she figures things out. Unfortunately, Beth insists on packing a bag first. Back to the  house we go! Before she totally packs that bag and heads to Claire’s, which is definitely her intention, the woman Beth berated at the occult bookstore shows up at the lake house. She explains to Beth that she didn’t sleep with Owen, but had a drink with him, toured the skeleton of the house across the lake, was asked to hold the sexy fetish idol and was choked by Owen after making out with him. He was unable to follow through on killing her and drove her home. It sure seems like he’s assaulting or killing women so he doesn’t kill Beth which is pretty fucked up. Beth travels across the lake to confront Ghost Owen, but as she has continued to get her drink on she stumbles and falls through the floor. Dead body! Dead bodies! A bunch of them! Her husband was pioneering a new method of insulation involving bethellgangers! Get in on (under) the ground floor now!

Beth, continuing to be Not Okay (can you imagine grieving a whole spouse alone? Jesus Christ), returns to her house and continues her (well earned) mental breakdown in the shower. She begs Ghost Owen to come back, and is visited by who she assumes is him. She reaches out and touches the entity and it’s totally time to DO IT WITH A GHOST. WOOOO! (despite finding a bunch of murdered doppelgangers under the floorboards across the lake). As the two begin to become more intimate, the entity tells Beth that it’s NOT OWEN. Dun dun dunnn.

Here’s where the movie loses me. The entity she’s talking to and interacting with? BIG SPOILER ALERT: Is Nothing. It’s what she saw while she was dead. Nothing fell for Beth when she was dead for four minutes way back in the when and we’re expected to believe that Owen, a regular dude, successfully tricked some Eldritch being that told him to kill her into thinking the Bethellgangers were actually Beth. Repeatedly. For like their whole relationship. Oh. This movie with supernatural elements is unrealistic! Oh well. I like the implication that this is closer to cosmic horror than it initially appeared. Or maybe I’m just putting that in here because I want this movie to be cooler? I don’t know. It got disappointing.

Beth falls into a dissociative state where she’s talking to Ghost Owen/Nothing in the boat. Ghost Owen/Nothing is trying to lure Beth back to it by killing herself. In the conscious world, she’s managed to sit herself in the boat on the lake with the same pistol Owen used. I’ve personally never sleep walked but one of my favorite humans does and wrote comics about it. The phenomenon is fascinating and some of the stories I’ve heard are terrifying. But enough about what I think is cool. Back to this wild final act I guess.

My girl Claire screams to Beth, cutting through her dream state, and jumps into the lake to save her best friend. Beth comes to and is pulled to safety by Claire and Mel. The last thing we see is a familiar shadowy figure floating in the boat in the middle of the lake. “There’s Nothing there.” Ugh.

Up until the final act, “The Night House” had me. It would have been way better as a “Hellraiser” movie, but probably not as good as Bruckner’s eventual ACTUAL “Hellraiser.” I give it a 2.5/5 Fun, but needed waaaay more cenobites.

As always, I recommend checking https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ for any triggers or things you don’t want to see before starting *any* horror movie.

All views expressed are my own, you don’t have to agree with them! I’m open to respectful discourse.

Feel free to leave any movie recommendations or anything you’d like to read a review of!