THE NIGHT Review: Trippy Terror at the Hotel
Chad Collins
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Starring Shahab Hosseini and Niousha Noor
Written by Kourosh Ahari and Milad Jarmooz
Directed by Kourosh Ahari
“They hear the truth, morning comes” a malevolent drifter whispers to Neda Naderi (Noousha Noor) midway through The Night, Kourosh Ahari’s auspicious Iranian-American genre debut. Neda and her husband Babek (Shahab Hosseini) are en route to their home when an auto accident, Babek’s insobriety, and the imbroglio of downtown Los Angeles compel them to pull the car over and rent a room for the night. Things quickly spiral as the Naderis, including their infant daughter, are plagued by specters in the dark, an ever-changing urban landscape, and a morning that defiantly, hauntingly refuses to come. Punctuated by paranoid shades of Kubrick’s The Shining and the oppressive beats of Babak Anvari’s Farsi-language debut Under the Shadow, The Night is a sensational mind-bender, a domestically charged haunted house fright fest that grows more confident, and more terrifying, as the interminable night drags on.
Enjoyment of Ahari’s debut is predicated on the audience’s willingness to buy into the movie’s central conceit. Kubrick’s influences are so apparent, the film is effectually drenched in a lift full of cascading blood. Unlike The Overlook Hotel, however, Ahari’s– the Hotel Normandie, whose siege metaphor is anything but subtle– is considerably less grounded and patient. Within fifteen minutes, furtive glances burn with marital distrust while phantasmal women and children haunt the periphery, calling out to Babek and Neda, urging them to atone for camouflaged sins of the past. The destination is clear, and even absentminded viewers will quickly guess what Babek and Neda are hiding from one another long before they’ve booked their supernatural suite.
The thrill, then, lies not in its unpredictability, but in its execution. When the endgame is announced with no less understatement than the neon-tinged sign of the Normandie, success both lives and dies on the intermittent chapters. These chapters, something like paranormal vignettes of Babek and Neda’s increasingly escalating encounters with the ghosts of their singular pasts, are electrifying. Hosseini and Noor imbue their characters with the internality of old friends, the kind so present and so immediate their haunted words and surreptitious quivers become all the more unnerving.
Director of photography Maz Makhani accentuates light and shadow, showing the audience just enough, but never too much, to let them find their bearing. Composer Nima Fakhrara’s score briefly flirts with the now quotidian thrums and rumbles of most contemporary genre features before morphing into something urgent, like the primal howl of a fractured marriage and buried secrets. The mood is both visual and sonic, an unceasing cacophony of disorientation and fear, the kind that urges you to grip the covers so tight your knuckles crack and bleed.
The ancillary cast is small and used sparingly, there to flank the flailing psyches of the core couple before retreating into darkness. A cryptic clerk and a corporeally thin police officer undermine and dismay, solidifying the notion to Babek and Neda– incredulous long beyond reason– that something otherworldly is happening at Hotel Normandie. Figures appear and disappear, and by the time the visceral and violent finale comes around, heads will roll. Secrets unravel, questions are both answered and posed, and The Night emerges as something truly special. Rivaling recent IFC Midnight releases such as Relic and The Wretched, The Night is yet another win, a directorial debut replete with the confidence and vigor of a veteran.
2021 will be a benchmark year for horror. Theatrical and digital experiences will be, at least temporarily, restructured beyond familiarity. Home-viewing will replace the theater as the crème de la crème of genre experiences– rich, silky, and an indulgence in a year that defies understanding. The Night is a stellar augur for the promises 2021 holds. Culturally rich, visually distinct, and cerebrally frightening, Ahari’s debut practically begs you to stay home and watch horror. So, check-in, turn down the lights, and let The Night lead you somewhere terrifying.
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The Night
Summary
The Night is a mind-bending and haunting foray into one couple’s fractured marriage and the secrets that bind. Unique and frightening, The Night is a trip worth taking.
