Mark Reviews Movies: THE LONG NIGHT (2022)

The Long Night, Well Go USA Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 3, 2022

Director Rich Ragsdale creates a menacing air during the early terrors of The Long Night. Along with some decent performances and a bit of humor, that helps this otherwise familiar and formulaic story, until the familiar formula inevitably takes control of and overshadows everything.

The tale revolves around Grace (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Jack (Nolan Gerard Funk), who have been dating long enough that he wants her to meet his parents. They'll make that stop on the way south from New York City. Grace, who spent her childhood in the South, never knew her parents, but a man believes he has found them. Grace and Jack can stay at his plantation home while she learns about her origin.

The screenplay by Robert Sheppe and Mark Young cuts to the chase pretty quickly (although Ragsdale certainly delays matters a bit amusingly with a couple of lengthy montages of aerial footage of a car driving down various roads). The trip to visit Jack's parents is skipped, but it went terribly enough that there's tension between the couple when they arrive at the plantation.

No one's there, so the two let themselves in and make themselves at home. Almost immediately, Grace begins to have strange dreams and visions of snakes and cloaked figures wearing animal skulls.

The latter group, at least, turns out to be real. In the middle of the night, they surround the house. The leader of this strange cult says they want Grace.

Until the third act, when the fairly predictable truth of Grace and her connection to the cult is gradually revealed, most of this material plays in a circular pattern of threats and scares. Accepting that fact, Ragsdale certainly makes good use of the unmoving cult, seen in long and wide shots from afar, and the sense of isolation within and surrounding the plantation. There's a feeling of helpless inevitability to this scenario—even if it's occasionally undermined by a couple of cheap jump scares, provided by cult members who seem to be able to teleport.

Taylor-Compton is admirable in a role as typical as it is enigmatic, on account of the central mystery of what the cult wants with Grace. Funk makes a strong impression as the seemingly thoughtless boyfriend, who turns out to be more thoughtful—both emotionally and in terms of smarts (At the first sign of trouble, he's already packing the couple's bags)—than we expect.

Some of the humor from Jack, especially his back-and-forth bickering with a man (played by Jeff Fahey) who knows the house, undermines the oppressive tone, but there are bigger problems in store for The Long Night. The eerie standoff eventually become a series of fights and chases, which, in terms of generic anti-climax, is only surpassed the last-minute dump of exposition.

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