The Night House

David Bruckner's The Night House is an imaginatively creepy haunted house film. Rebecca Hall is a bereaved widow whose husband of fourteen years builds her a lakeside dream house and then suddenly blows his brains out. Going through his belongings, she discovers her husband was harboring sinister secrets.

The script combines the supernatural with psychological horror. Bruckner elicits suspense from changes in perspective rather than jump scares. Hall does most of the heavy lifting in a largely silent film where she is alone on screen the majority of the time. The star of Christine, another suicide haunted film, brings some welcome mordant humor to the role. Sarah Goldberg and Vonde-Curtis Hall are solid in support. Richard Thompson's "Cavalry Cross" is effectively used as an augury of evil. The doppelganger theme is overly literalized, but The Night House is more thoughtful than most of its ilk.