_The Night House_ finds Rebecca Hall returning to the horror genre a
decade after _The Awakening_. Unlike the earlier film, a British
staple that involves a boarding school, _The Night House_ is an
American genre film about the dread at the heart of a nuclear family.
When the film begins her character Beth is reeling and bitter about
her husband's unexplained suicide in a boat in upstate New York
(Thousand Island region?). She is awakened by strange noises, then
haunted by visions. She starts digging into the husband's occult
dealings, which leads to the "night" house, Stacy Martin's bookstore
clerk, and many dead women. Unlike _Permission_, which she
co-produced, _The Night House_ is not an ensemble piece that
generously employs her friends and real-life husband (although I
don't want to comment on actors' lives); Hall is front and center
in this film, and brilliant in it. Director David Bruckner is
not bad. It is very scary, not only because of what is out there
to get you element, but also because it depicts the depths to which
characters we root for (at least one of them) can sink. Still,
it doesn't feel like *the* passion project we are waiting for from
Rebecca Hall quite yet.