Mark Reviews Movies: THE NIGHT (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 28, 2021

There isn't much to the setup of The Night: a married couple who recently had their first child and whose relationship is a bit shaky at the moment, an old hotel, and a lot of secrets, lies, and guilt. There are a few ghosts, too, although whether or not they're real or just imagined is one of the central mysteries of co-writer/director Kourosh Ahari's movie. If they're imagined, the real puzzle is what they mean for these characters. If they're real, the true enigma is what the hell is happening with this damned hotel.

Ahari and Milad Jarmooz's screenplay keeps a lot of information from us for a long stretch of time. Indeed, we don't learn who the ghosts in the hotel represent and what they want until an extended climax, as our lead characters finally own up to some transgression—either to the other or, since the secret-keeper already knows what sin has been committed, to the audience. Until that point, we're just left befuddled by the ghosts' presence, the reason they're even bothering these two, and the actual nature of these entities, existing either in the minds of the couple or truly, in some realm between life and death.

Babak (Shahab Hosseini) and Neda (Niousha Noor), immigrants from Iran, are attending a party at a friend's house. The husband has developed a bad, nagging toothache, and he keeps drinking to dull the pain—much to the chagrin of Neda. There's some cryptically loaded conversation between Babak and his friend Farhad (Armin Amiri), a doctor who hints of some tragic death in the emergency room recently. This becomes much more important than the screenwriters bother to emphasize, because, again, they're more concerned with maintaining the mystery of what's happening than letting us figure out what's happening, why it's happening, and how it affects any of these characters.

The party comes to an end, and Babak, Neda, and their 1-year-old daughter are about to head home. Farhad offers a place to sleep for the night, but a stubborn Babak insists he can make the drive. Neda keeps offering to drive, but the headstrong Babak refuses. When he seems to hit something in the road, the obstinate Babak won't turn around to return to Farhad's, and when Neda suggests they just find a hotel where they can spend the night, Babak just drives around town looking for one. Even his passive-aggressiveness is stubborn.

The hotel is an old place, where a displaced man (played by Elester Latham) lingers outside, mumbling to himself and surprising the couple by appearing right next to them, and the receptionist (played by George Maguire) is unnervingly polite. The couple settles down in their room, and before they can get to sleep, strange things start occurring.

It's all fairly typical stuff. There's a child, who keeps knocking on the door and calling for his mother. A cloaked figure appears to Babak every so often, and a black cat shows up to growl at the couple once in a while. Ahari plays the appearances of these ghostly presences in a pretty typical way, too—for shock, either through stinging musical cues or a sudden knocking or pounding on the soundtrack, and for a general aura of creepiness.

More intriguing, perhaps, are the things and people that certainly seem real but might suggest something else. The receptionist, for example, is a pleasant man, whether he's greeting this couple or explaining his long history of being present at moments of historical or mass murder (The list goes on and on, and he relates his connection to violent death with an unsettling smile). The homeless man outside the hotel later confronts Neda and, in perfect Farsi, offers a riddle of a warning.

Time and short-term memory plays some tricks on the two, as well. Babak loses track of his infant daughter. Even though he's certain he saw Neda come down to the lobby to take care of the baby, she's in the room asleep when he returns there. The couple has a lengthy and eerie conversation with a police officer (played by Michael Graham), only to discover that the entire discussion might have been pointless when there's a knock at the door.

Essentially, Ahari and Jarmooz rely almost exclusively on assorted tricks—of staging, editing, lighting, and, in the movie's final and most haunting moment, visual effects. Superficially, they're effective in creating and maintaining a sense of constant unease about what and who is real. In using so much trickery without establishing any kind of solid foundation for the rationale or meaning behind it, the movie's core—the reality of what any of these visions or ghosts actually mean to the characters—is kept at a distinct, confounding distance from us.

There are answers, eventually and inevitability, and as things fall into place, the foundation of this story does at least and finally make some sense. The Night, though, can't help itself, and with a final and supremely clichéd twist, the movie solidifies that the bulk of its aims has been as much superficial trickery as possible.

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