The Lake House

I think Netflix recommended The Night House (2021) as supernatural horror, Ms. Spenser's favorite genre, so I queued it up. Then I heard the Blank Check podcast Best of 2021, and they all praised the intensity of lead actress Rebecca Hall. So I queued it up - but also asked Ms. Spenser if we could watch it on a night when I'd have time to watch a few Three Stooges eps as a palate cleanser.

It starts with Sarah Goldberg taking her friend Rebecca Hall home, after a funeral, it seems. She says she'll be all right by herself, in the house her husband, an architect, designed and built. The husband who killed himself. She starts drinking and going through her husband's papers.

On one such evening, she finds a notebook with a sketch of the house, and a house with the same floor plan, but a mirror image. There's a note, like, "Mirror image confuses them." There are some sketches of occult diagrams, and many books on arcane subjects.

She also finds a picture on his phone. It looks like her, but somewhere she's never been. On his computer, she finds more pictures - they definitely look like her but aren't. She suspects that her husband was having an affair, which doesn't make her any more calm and centered. She is having nightmares about evil presences and frightened women. 

Somewhere around here, she goes out for drinks with her friends and co-workers. This is the scene the Blank Check guys were going on about. A small group of friends, just out for drinks, trying to be normal. But one of them has just lost a husband. To suicide. And he was seeing other women. And maybe there's ghosts.

Soon she sees the house across the lake - just like their house but a mirror image. In the windows she sees her husband with many, many women, different women in each room, all who look like her. But it's just a dream - or is it?

I'm not going to spoil this one, or do more than mention their black neighbor who knows more than he's saying, or when Hall actually meets one of the women. I'll assure you that the tension never lets up, and the ending is satisfying and effective. But this is mostly Hall's show. She's in almost every shot and her anxiety, fear, guilt, love, and desperation are palpable. We've seen her here and there (Godzilla vs. Kong) but nothing that features her like this. We've seen director David Bruckner's The Ritual (forgot to blog?) but liked this a lot more.