David Bruckner's The Night House is a tour de force for Rebecca Hall, who plays the grieving widow of a man who before the film's action has taken his own life. Hall's Beth wanders through the couple's beautiful lake house trying to piece together possible reasons why her loving husband (Evan Jonigkeit) would shoot himself in the head. She stumbles upon clues between tumblers of whisky, failing to heed warnings from best friend Clair (Sarah Goldberg) and neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall) that she should step back from what has become an unhealthy obsession. Night visitations from whispering specters keep Beth, and the audience, on edge as she uncovers one mystery after another about the man she'd loved but, apparently, did not know very well.
Bruckner and writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski have crafted a clever mind-bender that doesn't commit to one genre -- it's part mystery, part thriller, part horror, part psychodrama -- but it's wholly Hall's picture; she owns every frame of it as her character careers from heartbroken to spiteful to delirious and back. And the ending is sure to prompt many exchanges long after the credits have rolled.
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