GONE IN THE NIGHT (2022)

Studio:     Vertical Entertainment
Director:    Eli Horowitz
Writer:     Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby
Producer:  Raphael Margules, J.D. Lifshitz, Shaun Sanghani, Russ Posternak
Stars:     Winona Ryder, Dermot Mulroney, John Gallagher Jr., Owen Teague, Brianne Tju, Yvonne Senat Jones, Alain Uy, Dustin Ingram

Review Score:

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Summary:

After her boyfriend inexplicably goes missing following a rental cabin mix-up, a woman tries to unravel the mystery behind his disappearance.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Feeling insulted by his older girlfriend Kath as they host several mature friends for dinner, Max abruptly leaves under the pretense of buying more wine. At the convenience store, Max meets a younger couple, Al and Greta. Greta invites Max to join them at a nearby bar. Over drinks, Max and Greta vaguely flirt with each other as Greta, who treats Al dismissively, reminds Max of his carefree past. Greta invites Max to attend a punk rock show and gives him the address of a remote cabin where they can meet beforehand.

When he returns home, Max and Kath argue over his long absence. Max also accuses Kath of no longer being adventurous. As a remedy, Max creates a ruse for sneaking off to the concert by proposing a spontaneous getaway to a remote cabin.

Kath and Max arrive at the cabin to find Greta and Al already there. Max pretends a mix-up must have resulted in a double booking. Greta and Al are privately distressed that Max brought someone with him. Al tries to get rid of Max, but Greta insists that he and Kath stay as she forces Al to go forward with their undisclosed plan. Kath notices Max and Greta flirting as the two couples play a party game before Kath goes to bed.

In the morning, Kath discovers Max is missing. A distraught Al claims Max and Greta hooked up and ran off together, which Kath believes. In reality, Greta and Al drugged Max and put him in a barrel as part of a scheme to supply blood transfusions to Al’s ill father, Nicholas Barlow.

Back at home, Kath’s suspicions inspire her to Google the cabin’s owner, whom she discovers is Nicholas Barlow, although she does not learn about his link to Al. Kath calls Barlow, but he refuses to divulge any personal information that would help her locate Greta. However, Kath and Barlow take a mutual interest in one another as they begin an ongoing relationship where they share stories about their broken romances and Barlow’s family history of health problems.

Barlow eventually agrees to stake out Greta’s address with Kath. Kath and Barlow follow Greta to an underground club where Kath confronts Greta. Greta speaks apologetically about her supposed new relationship with Max. Kath also sees a photo on Greta’s phone of Greta and Max seemingly sleeping together.

As their relationship continues developing, Kath visits Barlow at his cabin. While Barlow secretly speaks to Greta and Al, who are hiding in the woods outside, Kath discovers Barlow is Al’s father after she finds a picture of the two of them together. Behind a padlocked door, Kath also finds a makeshift medical suite. Hearing noises outside, Kath unlocks a shipping container where she discovers a groggy Max hooked up to transfusion tubes on a gurney.

Barlow, Greta, and Al confront Kath. Barlow tries to rationalize their imprisonment of Max as a means of saving his son from losing his father like Barlow did. However, Greta produces a document that reveals Barlow isn’t terminally ill, but rather, he undergoes the transfusions because he is afraid of getting older. Greta implies that they’ll have to kill Kath because she knows too much. Kath surprises everyone by claiming she wants to undergo the treatment too, and she wants Greta to be her “cow,” forcing Barlow to choose between the two of them. Barlow chooses Kath and compels Al to help him forcibly subdue Greta. Kath uses the moment to try to flee with Max. Realizing he is burdensome to Kath’s escape, Max removes his transfusion tube, which causes him to collapse to the ground. Kath uses that opportunity to escape outside and padlock Barlow, Greta, and Al inside the shipping container together. Before driving away, however, Kath gets an idea to take over Barlow’s cabin.

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Review:

When “Gone in the Night” did its film festival tour in early 2022, it did so under the peculiar title “The Cow.” It’s no wonder that name changed. “Gone in the Night” follows an older woman trying to find out what happened to her younger boyfriend who suddenly went missing under suspicious circumstances. “The Cow” sounds like a movie-of-the-week made for Canadian TV where flustered single mom Winona Ryder reluctantly inherits a troubled family farm she and her angsty daughter learn to love thanks to a stubborn animal who changes their city slicker ways.

Having had two vastly different titles is an interesting tidbit because it helps to know that “Gone in the Night” was confused about its identity from the get-go. Is it a mystery-intensive suspense thriller? Is it an arthouse melodrama examining the dynamics of disparate-age relationships? Is it a quirky romance between two brokenhearted people of a certain maturity? The movie never makes up its mind, which makes it difficult for an audience to engage their own minds in the movie.

“Gone in the Night” opens with several outdoor establishing shots that culminate in indistinct noises emanating from a shipping container tucked behind some trees. As with the previous title “The Cow,” we’ll of course come to discover what these things mean down the line. But what do they mean in this moment? Is the metronome echo supposed to be ominous? Are the woodland cutaways supposed to be serenely calming? What mood does the movie mean to establish when there are no characters and no context before opening credits have even crawled?

“Gone in the Night” employs a nonlinear storytelling style that regularly swaps between two timelines. It’s a necessary technique, otherwise we’d know too much too soon and there would be no tension at all.

In the present, Kath (Winona Ryder) and her younger boyfriend Max (John Gallagher Jr. continuing his unbroken streak of playing average men in average movies) try to get over the “we used to do things like this” hump in their rocky romance and capture some adventurous spontaneity. Max rents them a remote cabin in the woods on a whim, except when they get there, they find the place already occupied by a young couple, Greta and Al. The mismatched foursome decides to make the most of an apparent double booking by agreeing to stay the night together. A party game passes the time, during which it’s not at all lost on Kath that Max and Greta seem to have some flirty chemistry.

The following morning, Kath wakes to find Max missing. A visibly distraught Al claims their respective partners hooked up and ran off. Kath immediately says, “Huh, I guess that checks out” and goes home without so much as a raised eyebrow, let alone an attempt to eke out any useful information.

Kath eventually makes that attempt some time later. Finally thinking maaaybe she should look into Greta, she searches for the cabin’s owner and finds out he’s a charming man in her age range named Nicholas Barlow (Dermot Mulroney). Barlow and Kath make a flirty love connection of their own, though Kath still sets aside time to continue her amateur investigation into Max’s sudden disappearance. “Gone in the Night” ping-pongs between these scenes and alternating flashbacks that gradually expose events leading up to how Max chose Barlow’s cabin, and how everyone’s true identities link to one another.

When a movie that can predominantly be considered a slow-burn thriller packs several other genres around the source of its story, thereby refusing to fit neatly inside one specific box, it often manufactures suspense by keeping you in the dark about motivations, meanings, and mystery. “Gone in the Night” certainly keeps you guessing, except it never clearly indicates what accompanying emotions it wants the viewer to feel.

Are we supposed to be wary of Dermot Mulroney from the outset or root for his budding romance with Winona Ryder to go full bloom? Are we supposed to worry about John Gallagher Jr.’s unknown whereabouts or never care about him to begin with since his personality is almost exclusively defined by being a dismissive prick to Winona Ryder? Are we supposed to remember that shipping container from the prologue and repeatedly wonder, when is that going to come into play? Does “Gone in the Night” want us to focus on the missing person case, the thematic drama, or the cute adult romance? Emotional investments are practically impossible when we don’t know what we’re even watching.

“Gone in the Night” has the sort of script that actors adore because it’s loaded with meandering monologues about backstories and personal philosophies. It’s also rife with opportunities for the cast to shoot cryptic looks at each other and pivot expressions on a dime. As a performance-reliant piece, “Gone in the Night” gets by with having its understated acting generate intrigue. Thanks to some pleasing portrayals, albeit ones that operate on autopilot considering everyone inhabits a role they’ve owned before, there ends up being just enough meat to the mystery that, despite the urge to yawn at the distracted pacing, it holds your attention because you still want to know what really happened and why.

The full revelation nevertheless results in an underwhelmed “well, whatever” reaction, which is not coincidentally how you’ll probably react to the movie overall. You’ll come to realize that “Gone in the Night” really does fit better as a title than “The Cow” since it also doubles as a description of what will assuredly happen when the film suddenly vanishes from streaming and broadcast availability, and no one even notices.

Review Score: 50

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