PLOT SUMMARY: A grieving widow, Beth, finds some shocking secrets about her husband Owen who committed suicide.
What happens when we die? What do we see? Where do we go?
Do we float up to the sky and get to sit on some fluffy clouds like in the cartoons? Is there nothing but a black void? Or do we go to a place that we believe to be heaven?
If you've watched Midnight Mass, then you've probably heard the lengthy monologues about death.
We all have ideas about what happens after death but there is no way to prove it, is there? The people, who come back to life after death for a few minutes and then being resuscitated, have reported seeing bright lights and an encounter from their loved ones who had departed. But it can never be proven, can it?
Now, what if, when a person dies and is brought back to life, what if that person brings a passenger along with him or her?
Well, that would become a plot of a horror movie.
THE NIGHT HOUSE Movie Plot
Beth is grieving the suicide of her husband Owen. Her neighbours keep giving her food to eat which she has no interest in.
She's a school teacher too and one day, after class, a disgruntled mother comes to her, stating that her son did not deserve a low grade for a test. Beth tries to be a reasonable teacher but then loses her cool when the parent continues to harass her.
She has an outburst wherein she reveals her husband took a boat out into the lake and shot himself and she has no idea why, so yes, she should be excused if she's distracted or had to take some days off. She then asks if a B will be sufficient. The stunned parent agrees.
She goes out with a couple of friends and again spoils everyone's mood by bringing up morbid stuff. Her friend Claire is the only one who understands what her friend must be going through.
At Beth's home, she reveals to Claire that Owen left her a note that said, "You were right. There's nothing. Nothing is after you." Claire thinks it's pretty cryptic until Beth reveals that some years ago she had died for a few minutes and when she came back she was asked what she saw and she replied it was nothing. Owen had a fantasy about the afterlife and didn't believe her.
Later Beth uses Owen's phone and finds a picture of a woman that looked like her. She shows it to Claire who thinks it is Beth but her friend reveals she doesn't have those clothes. Claire asks her to let it go but Beth wonders if her husband was having an affair. She finds even more pictures of women that resemble her on his computer.
Beth starts to sense a presence in her house and wonders if Owen is trying to reach out to her. She sees bloody footprints at the docks leading up to the boat. When she looks back into the house she sees Owen and her struggling and arguing.
She goes towards it only to wake up and find it was all a dream.
She meets Mel, her neighbour, who tells her to be careful while going out as she is depressed and he has concerns about her doing something reckless. He then reveals there was a time when he saw Owen in the woods taking Beth to the shed he was building, only that it wasn't Beth but someone who resembled her.
Beth gets convinced that her husband did have an affair, and after going through more of Owen's things and finding a strange doll too that has thirteen needles on it, she wonders what he was up to, especially when she finds a book that is supposed to help trap demonic entities.
She studies the picture of a woman at the bookstore and realizes she can recognize which one it is. She goes there to harass the woman called Madalyne who tries to convince an irate Beth that she didn't sleep with her husband.
Later she admits that Owen did kiss her but then tried to choke her, so she ran away.
THE NIGHT HOUSE Ending Explained with Spoilers!
At home, Beth finds blueprints of a house that looks like the one she's living in but in reverse. She wonders why Owen would be building a house similar to hers. She heads back to the shed Owen was working on and accidentally steps on a floorboard that reveals several bodies of women.
At night she continues to feel Owen's presence and is in complete denial of him being a murderer. She feels someone and lets it kiss her. She asks if he is Owen and when he denies it she is shocked.
He then reveals it is Nothing, the thing Beth saw when she died for a few minutes years ago. It grew attached to her and when Owen realized it was after his wife he tried to trick it by building a reverse house and getting women who looked like Beth so that Nothing can go after them instead. Eventually, he loses and kills himself. When he wrote that there was nothing after her he meant it as a warning.
Beth is devastated. She is led to a boat and she sees Owen telling her to join her. It isn't him but Nothing beckoning her to kill herself.
Claire comes looking for Beth and when she doesn't find her friend in the house, rushes to the lake where she sees her on a boat. Claire jumps into the lake and swims to the boat. She shakes Beth out of her delusions and brings her out.
Beth looks on at the lake and can still see Nothing on the boat. He will have to keep waiting. Beth has no intention to join him.
The Night House is a taut thriller but only in the third act of the movie. The movie begins strong, meanders along the way when Beth tries to investigate the women who look like her. The twist about Nothing going after Beth is what was the unique element of the movie.
Scare scale: 3/5
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