THE LONG NIGHT (2022)

Studio:     Well Go USA
Director:    Rich Ragsdale
Writer:     Mark Young, Robert Sheppe
Producer:  Vasily Bernhardt, Daemon Hillin, Ryan R. Johnson, Martin Sprock
Stars:     Scout Taylor-Compton, Nolan Gerard Funk, Kevin Ragsdale, Deborah Kara Unger, Jeff Fahey

Review Score:

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Summary:

Upon returning to her birthplace in search of her true parents, a young woman and her boyfriend are terrorized by a mysterious cult.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

I. THE INVITATION

Accompanied by her privileged boyfriend Jack Cabot, Grace Covington travels from New York to her birthplace in South Carolina to meet Frank ‘Gage’ Caldwell, who claims he has information about the unknown birth parents Grace has spent 10 years searching for. Grace and Jack find Frank’s isolated plantation home empty, but enter anyway since Frank told Grace where she could find the key.

Jack notices a strange totem among some trees near the house. Grace encounters a snake while jogging and again inside the house. Jack and Grace each see shadowy figures in the distance. They also hear strange static noises when they are on the phone.

II. THE SEDUCTION

While Jack is inexplicably locked out of the bedroom, a robed cultist wearing a cow skull mask seemingly appears before Grace as she dreams of a possessed woman floating in the air. When the experience abruptly ends, Jack recommends that they leave immediately since something strange appears to be going on.

On the front porch, Grace and Jack find a mutilated cat in the middle of a six-pointed star made of blood. Grace and Jack retreat back inside when they see the home is surrounded by robed cultists in skull masks brandishing torches and standing silently.

III. THE ENCOUNTER

Frank’s brother Wayne comes to the house. Grace explains that Frank invited her there because he could supposedly help find her parents. Suspicious of the strangers in his brother’s home, Wayne tries to call the sheriff, but hears strange static just like Grace and Jack did. Wayne admits that locals know rumors about a cult, but he insists he and Frank are not part of it.

After finding Frank’s dead body in an upstairs closet, Wayne goes outside to angrily confront the cultists, who momentarily disappeared when he first arrived. The Master cultist raises a hand, which supernaturally freezes Wayne in his tracks. Other cultists then slash Wayne to death.

The cultists burn a wooden star symbol on the lawn. Grace suddenly convulses and enters a trance where she experiences a series of unusual visions.

IV. THE EXPERIENCE

As Grace continues to see odd visions and hear taunting messages on the phone, a cultist enters the house to attack Jack. Grace recovers a gun found earlier and uses it to shoot the cultist. At the same time, The Master screams outside.

V. THE RITUAL

Grace and Jack find an occult grimoire that speaks of Uktena, an ancient serpent demon who converted Christian pilgrims into worshipping it. Uktena’s evil spirit was trapped on the land where the plantation now resides. A prophecy claims Uktena’s disciples will return to free the demon so it can manifest in human form. “The Master” was also said to carry a perfect child who could host the demon, and the ritual must occur on the vernal equinox to bring about “The Long Night.”

The cultist Grace shot rises to attack Jack. Another cultist enters the house and also attacks. To Jack’s shock, Grace becomes enraged and beats the second cultist to death.

Grace storms outside to angrily confront the cultists. Grace suddenly loses control of her body and begins levitating.

Jack recovers the gun and fires at the cultists, which breaks Grace’s trance. Due to his injuries, Jack tells Grace to flee into the forest without him, which she does. Cultists surround Jack, attack him, and take him captive.

Cultists surround Grace in the woods. Grace has a vision of a man in a skull mask impregnating a woman on the forest floor.

VI. THE COMMITTAL

Grace flees to a building where she finds Jack chained to a wall in the cellar. Cultists surround Grace again. The Master unmasks and identifies herself as Grace’s real mother, and she explains that Grace was born in order to free the demon.

Uktena possesses Grace after she is forced to drink blood from a chalice. Unexpectedly, Grace uses her newfound powers to kill the cult with a supernatural scream.

VII. THE RENEWAL

Now fully controlled by the demon, Grace stabs Jack to death. No longer bound to the plantation’s land, Grace/Uktena then walks off of the property while entranced with white eyes.

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Review:

The day before watching “The Long Night,” I tried to screen “Ghosts of the Ozarks.” Although I sat down with every intention of writing a full review, I only made it 20 minutes into that film before turning it off out of extreme boredom. I simply didn’t see the point in obliterating an entire afternoon just so I could martyr myself on another mediocre-at-best movie that did nothing for me. And if you know how many Amityville DTV dumpsters I’ve misspent my time diving into, you know I don’t usually hit the Stop button prematurely even when it’s painfully obvious I really should.

I thought I might finally be turning a corner as a critic whose poor viewing choices end up making him cranky far too often, but “The Long Night” reminds me I’m not there yet. When this film’s first act featured an excessive number of drone shots following a car down same-looking country roads again and again and again, I thought, “Here we go with yet another snoozer.” Not long after, when the camera moved on to a montage of Scout Taylor-Compton jogging down same-looking country roads again and again and again, I had another opportunity to pull the ripcord on my parachute and still didn’t take it. And that’s the story of how we arrived at this review of “The Long Night,” a mediocre-at-best movie that I obliterated an entire afternoon watching and then writing about even when every early indication warned me not to.

Since first attracting attention as Laurie Strode in Rob Zombie’s “Halloween,” Scout Taylor-Compton has filled up the back of her headshot with an unfortunate number of bargain basement B-movies. Bad films have subsequently led to a bad reputation, and not necessarily undeservedly so. From my vantage point though, the problem lies with her projects, not with her. (I think it’d be a smart career move to get away from the genre for a bit and become a go-to girl for Hallmark holiday movies, which her personality would be a fine fit for.)

Unlike a lot of actors who’ve gone down the slide from theatrical thrillers to VOD doldrums, Scout Taylor-Compton always puts in a committed performance. Believable or not, entertaining or not, she never shies away from getting physical, turning herself up to full volume, or carrying about while covered in blood, muck, or gunk, all of which she does in “The Long Night.” The trouble is she tends to play interchangeable roles of indistinguishable women, which is also the case with “The Long Night.”

I don’t know how many horror films I’ve seen with Taylor-Compton in them. I do know that if you wrote down descriptions of the people she played in each one – A.) I’m not sure the descriptions would be all that different, and B.) I’d definitely have difficulty matching who went with what movie.

In “The Long Night,” Taylor-Compton again plays a poorly-written person defined by one driving trait. Here, that sole trait is a desire to find her birth parents. That’s essentially all there is to the character, lazily named Grace Covington since the writers apparently consider it clever to directly reference her not-so-mysterious connection to a death cult at the center of the story. (Hold up, you mean to tell me she’s looking for information about her unknown past while the coven is simultaneously awaiting the long-lost child foretold by prophecy to birth their demon? Could these two things be related?)

Grace’s boyfriend Jack joins her on the journey back to her birthplace. It’s curious that the movie chooses to characterize Jack as a douche-bro who, dressed in button-down shirts at least two sizes too tight, barks on the phone about some big money deal and invites Grace to hobnob in The Hamptons. I’m not sure if Jack’s “probably roofied someone at a frat party in college” vibe is intended to make him suspicious with regards to possible involvement in the cult conspiracy. I do know it makes him immediately unlikable, a terrible position to be in when “The Long Night” wants us to sympathize with him later. There’s also supposed to be a split dynamic about how he’s a trust fund rich prick while Grace is a scrappy bumpkin from the South, except nothing comes from that other than one early argument stemming from their drastically different upbringings. Then it’s right back to being two lumps on a log.

One of the only other faces seen in the movie belongs to Jeff Fahey. His is a totally thankless cameo the film could completely cut without missing a beat. Fahey shows up for a few minutes, gets killed by the cult and, well, that’s it. I’m stumped as to a possible explanation for why he took such a meaningless part in such a marginal midnight movie.

“The Long Night” weaves a vague veil of dread out of moderately moody sights as opposed to concrete chills, thrills, or action. If images of robed figures wearing animal skull masks while brandishing torches in the dark freak you out, most of the movie’s slow-moving minutes have plenty such spookiness to spare. These creeps can be admittedly unsettling. But because there’s precious little background initially given to the cult and none whatsoever for Grace since the plot involves uncovering her true identity, we’re essentially just looking at guys standing still in black hoods and frocks. They may be visually haunting, yet where’s the story to substantiate their menace?

“The Long Night” basically builds into a siege/home invasion thriller with a cult theme that isn’t anywhere near as exciting as that setup sounds. Overlong, uneventful, and with not much more than static-filled phone calls standing in for scares, it’s about as skippable as low-budget horror fare gets. The movie tells you as much by the 20-minute mark, and yet I still stuck it out until the predictably pedestrian ending. I should have remembered my lesson from yesterday, as one simple press of the Stop button could have salvaged an entire afternoon.

Review Score: 40

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