There are lots of different types of horror movies. Giant Kaiju monsters may stomp, fly, and smash their way through cities, aliens may menace earthbound and space travelers alike, demonic possession may turn a young girl in specter of degradation, the recently dead may stalk the land consuming the living, or masked and disfigured killer may stalk promiscuous teens, but my favorite form of a horror movie is the ghost story, like The Night House.

In the story Rebecca Hall’s character Beth struggles to accept the sudden and inexplicable suicide of her beloved and apparently devoted husband Owen. Attempting to power through her grief and refusing to recognize it Beth tries to carry own with her life, going to work as a public-school teacher, having drink with her co-workers, but alone in the lakeside house that she and Owen built, strange visitations and events intrude on her solitude. Investigating these strange occurrences leads Beth to discover that Owen had secrets and bring them to light reveals truths she is unwilling to confront.

The Night House is a slow-burn ambiguous ghost story of a horror film. This is not the type of horror movie that presents the audience with an elaborate special make-effects ‘kill’ every fifteen minutes but rather one that lives in the liminal spaces between what is clearly happening and what may be happening. Like Robert Wise’s The Haunting it is a film that can be interpreted as the work of malevolent spirits or the hallucinations of a troubled mind. For my money there is a single two shot sequence that lands the project on the it really happened interpretation, but your mileage may vary.

Rebecca Hall, who also acted as one of the final executive producers, carries the entire film. The story is told solely through her viewpoint with only a couple of sequences in the final moments breaking this convention to give as another characters view of the scene. I have been a fan of Hall’s performances since I first saw in in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige and here as the center of The Night House she doesn’t disappoint. The direction by David Bruckner is solid and executed with a firm hand on the ambiguity needed for this production. Elisha Christian’s cinematography is lush shifting comfortably between daylight scenes of peaceful tranquility to the night’s deep and dark shadows filled with unseen dread. Screenwriting team Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski have crafted a tale of grief and depression’s ability to drown us that utilizes horror as a method of exploration those themes. The Night House’s development of those themes of loss and what it does to us is reminiscent of 2014’s The Babadook without being derivative but rather so complimentary that the pair would make a most excellent double-feature.

The Night House is currently playing theatrically.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,