Is the spooky stuff in 'Night House' grief? Or ghosts?

Rebecca Hall is smashing as a widow tormented by grief and spooks.

By Chris Hewitt Star Tribune

August 19, 2021 — 11:10am

Rebecca Hall's role in ghost story "The Night House" is grueling but I guess the upside is that at least she didn't have to memorize much dialogue.

There are virtually no words in the first 10 minutes of "House" and they're used sparingly in subsequent scenes, too. Director David Bruckner is more interested in images that convey loneliness: an unoccupied boat, rocking in a current; empty rooms; wind chimes that no one is around to hear.

As the movie opens, Hall's Beth is returning home from her husband's funeral and she seems set on solitude, until creaking floorboards, mysterious music and other phenomena make her wonder if she really is alone.

Bruckner is good at the atmospheric stuff. We're in bright, practical Beth's head for most of "House" and that means we're never sure how to interpret what we're seeing. Are those texts she gets from her dead husband real, or the product of a mourning, sleep-deprived imagination? When she finds her architect husband's plans for their lake house, with a reference to a "reverse floor plan," does that mean something nefarious is happening or is she just bad at interpreting blueprints? Is a woman whose photo she finds on her husband's phone a creepy look-alike or is she, in fact, Beth?

The questions "House" asks are spooky and fun because they acknowledge that grief can feel like a ghost that haunts us, reminding us of a past we can never recapture. If you're a fan of this sort of movie, you won't be surprised to learn that the answers, when they come, aren't quite as much fun, since they force "House" to slither out of a place of unsettling unknowability and into an explanation for whatever it is that's going on here.

That can be disappointing. That it's mostly not, in "The Night House," has a lot to do with Hall's controlled, intelligent performance. Hall is on-screen for almost every minute of the movie and she's always interesting.

When Beth is at her most grief-stricken, Hall makes bold choices — Beth often pretends to think something is funny when it's breaking her heart and she's prone to jarring outbursts because she feels like she has nothing left to lose — but they all seem oddly, uncomfortably right in "The Night House."

"I can't tell if you're being serious," a friend (played by Sarah Goldberg) tells Beth when she's trying to explain why she thinks her dead husband has returned to their house to torment her.

We can't, either, and that's what makes her thrilling.

Chris Hewitt • 612-673-4367