THE NIGHT (2020 - Farsi)

Studio:     IFC Midnight
Director:    Kourosh Ahari
Writer:     Milad Jarmooz, Kourosh Ahari
Producer:  Jeffrey Allard, Cheryl Staurulakis, Armin Amiri, Mohammad Dormanesh, Kourosh Ahari, Alex Bretow
Stars:     Shahab Hosseini, Niousha Noor

Review Score:

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Summary:

Trapped in a psychologically unsettling hotel, an Iranian couple confronts the personal secrets that trouble their marriage.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Tired, lost, and inebriated after a late dinner party with their friends Farhad, Sara, Mohsen, and Elahe, troubled couple Babak and Neda Naderi check into Hotel Normandie with their baby Shabnam. Babak and Neda have unusual encounters with the receptionist as well as with a homeless man outside. They also hear knocks on their door and noises on the roof, but find no one there whenever they investigate.

Neda has several encounters with a five-year-old boy calling her “Mommy.” Babak repeatedly sees visions of a woman later revealed to be named Sofia.

Babak takes the baby down to the lobby to get hot water. While feeding Shabnam, the receptionist strangely tells Babak about all of the assassinations, mass shootings, and death he has witnessed. The receptionist concludes by saying the death of a child is the worst.

Neda seemingly joins Babak in the lobby. Neda takes Shabnam and tells Babak to return to their room. When he goes back upstairs however, Babak finds Neda still in their suite. Babak and the real Neda rush downstairs to find their baby unattended. Neda worries Babak is still drunk and hallucinating when he explains his visions of another woman.

Haunting experiences continue. Babak calls the police about an unknown stalker. An officer comes to their room to take Babak’s complaint. The officer explains there are no other guests in the hotel as he rudely dismisses Babak’s concerns. The officer also asks Neda about her “other” child, which creates more confusion for the couple.

Babak answers a knock at the door. Babak sees the same police officer standing in the hallway. Both versions of the man suddenly vanish during Babak and Neda’s shock.

Babak and Neda hurry outside. Babak leaves Neda and Shabnam at their car when he realizes he has to return to the room for the keys. While alone, the homeless man tells Neda in Farsi, “If they hear the truth, it will be morning.” Neda also hears the ghostly little boy asking to play with his sister.

Back in the room, Babak recoils at the sight of Sofia dead in the bathtub. A ring falls onto the floor. Babak briefly passes out in the elevator as Sofia tells him to “remember.”

Neda goes back inside the hotel only for her and Babak to discover they can no longer open the lobby doors or break the windows. Babak calls Farhad for help escaping, but Farhad merely repeats a cryptic threat that there is no way out. Neda wonders if the matching tattoos she and Babak got earlier that day caused some kind of curse.

The little boy continues telling Neda to confess what she did. Neda finally reveals to Babak that she was pregnant when Babak moved to America five years earlier while she stayed in Iran. Fearful that Babak would never return, Neda had an abortion because she didn’t want to raise a child without a father.

The hotel’s power comes back on after Neda shares her secret. Remembering the homeless man’s message and seeing it is still dark outside as dawn approaches, Neda realizes Babak must also be hiding a secret that still prevents them from leaving.

Babak has another encounter with Sofia while looking for a different exit. In his confused fright, Babak accidentally stabs Neda. During his next series of visions, Babak relives a hospital experience that reveals he had a secret girlfriend who committed suicide because of his relationship with Neda.

Thinking his wife may have been right about the cursed tattoo, Babak stabs at his forearm with a scalpel. Babak wakes back in the hotel room where Neda and Shabnam are asleep at 3am. While refreshing himself in the sink, Babak’s reflection stops moving in the mirror. The reflection turns around while Babak continues staring, echoing the image in a painting Babak noticed earlier by the elevator.

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Review:

Some film fans recoil at the phrase “elevated horror” because they take it as being arrogantly dismissive of movies that must therefore be “beneath” them. That’s not the intent of that term though. All horror simply is not created equal. It’s disingenuous to pretend something such as “Relic” (review here) isn’t operating on a different level than say “Puppet Master 5.” To instead insist they should be under one umbrella because they both belong to the same broad genre doesn’t make better sense. It’s hard to come up with an alternate word that doesn’t sound somewhat haughty too, e.g. “sophisticated” or “refined.” But there’s a big gap between productions from A24 and those from Troma. Using shorthand to differentiate between them shouldn’t create a divisive debate.

I wouldn’t give “The Night” the full “elevated” label, but I would call it “adult” horror. As with “elevated,” that shouldn’t inherently imply that everything else must therefore be “kiddie.” These aren’t binary terms.

“The Night” opens at a small dinner party. Three couples calmly discuss marriage, raising children, and career difficulties. They drink chilled alcohol as an aperitif, delicately fashion kabobs for cooking, and ruminate on adjusting to life in America after emigrating from Iran. These aren’t horny high-schoolers slugging from red Solo cups while faux metal music plays in the background. What I’m saying is “The Night” isn’t a horror movie made to be rented for a 13-year-old’s sleepover. It’s meant for introspective reflection on its themes and coffeehouse discourse about its style. It’s “adult,” and not just because its main characters are of a certain age.

Press blurbs link “The Night’s” psychological suspense to that of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” I’m not onboard with that stretched comparison. Both stories take place in haunted hotels that aggravate already fragile minds but really, big similarities stop at that shared setting.

Babak and Neda have hit a rough road in their relationship. They also literally hit rough road when a GPS malfunction, too much to drink for Babak, and running over a black cat leaves them looking for temporary accommodations for the evening.

Babak and Neda settle at Hotel Normandie, a place whose dimly lit interiors and apparent lack of any other living guests promise the peace they want for their infant daughter. On the other hand, a muttering homeless man outside, a desk clerk weirdly obsessed with discussing violent deaths, and ghostly visions promise a long night of unusual encounters. Hotel Normandie is somewhat entrancing yet sometimes perplexing. Most of that dichotomy appears intentional although some oddities may be due to criss-crossed wiring in set decoration. Otherwise outstanding in the sallow complexion of its cinematography and production design, it’s curious that the hotel seems swank based on its lobby, hallways, and spiraling staircases, yet there’s still a pulsing red glow outside Babak and Neda’s suite window like the place rents rooms by the hour.

The blinking neon trope might owe to the film’s live theater presentation. “The Night” is constructed much like a play in terms of staging, tone, and in how characters converse with one another, which is primarily via one-on-one encounters.

Package all of the above in suggestive atmosphere and “The Night” solidifies as a philosophical platform for exploring the mindscapes of the two protagonists. The plot isn’t concerned with laying out much mythology, which audiences might expect when they hear “haunted hotel.” In other words, “The Night” is about people confronting personal problems, not the history behind a vengeful ghost’s curse or anything like that.

As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, “The Night” qualifies as a slow burn. Though viewers may not necessarily feel a drag on the pace, they will notice that the movie is never in a hurry either. Babak and Neda don’t even arrive at Hotel Normandie until the 20-minute mark in what turns out to be a lengthy hour and 45 minutes spent with two people trapped in a box of their own mind’s making. Long-lasting shots like to linger when the camera stares down dark corridors or at Babak’s shadowed face while he internally ponders his problems. Whether your patience matches that tempo is a matter of personal preference.

While brief flickers of an unidentified woman plague Babak, a boy who calls her “Mommy” haunts Neda. Even without the copious clues couched in cryptic comments from other characters, I can’t fathom anyone but the most oblivious viewer being unable to figure out who these phantom figures are. Babak and Neda are each keeping a secret from their spouse. I’ll give you three guesses how the boy relates to Neda’s past. Save the other two for Babak’s frightening female and you’ll still have one left over.

Since the movie emphasizes mood, the mystery’s thinness doesn’t hurt “The Night” like it would a more fiction-focused film. Nevertheless, “The Night” doesn’t end up as a consistently fascinating supernatural chiller, although it’s a far cry from a ho-hum haunter too. Noises from above and knocks at the door when no one is there can only take a horror movie so far, and that distance has difficulty covering “The Night’s” runtime. The movie makes up some of the missing mileage with intriguing performances, particularly from George Maguire and Michael Graham in their unsettlingly “off” supporting roles, and from the light Persian patina over proceedings. Glibly, that might make “The Night” reductively referred to as “that one with the Iranian couple trapped in an empty hotel.” Even that makes for a more contemplative cinematic experience than something with a comedic killer doll. What that equals in entertainment value is up to you.

Review Score: 55

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