“The Night House,” a new thriller starring Rebecca Hall and now playing in theatres, explores the psychological damage left behind after tragedy and secrets tear a couple apart.
When we first meet upstate New York high school teacher Beth (Hall) she is lost in grief in the aftermath of her husband Owen’s (Evan Jonigkeit) sudden death. She’s angry, self-medicating with alcohol to dull the pain.
At night, alone in the beautiful lake house he built for them, she is tormented by ghostly visions. Bloody footprints appear, the stereo snaps on by itself to play “their song” and there are loud knocks at the door, but when she opens the door, there’s nobody there. During the daylight hours, she’s left with her grief and a nagging sense that Owen left behind as many secrets as he did memories.
Her friend Claire (Sarah Goldberg) and neighbour Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall) offer support, but the horrifying visions and aural experiences continue, pushing her to the edge. As she packs up his things, clothes, books, the compiled ephemera of a life, she uncovers evidence that Owen had a hidden life involving the occult and a number of women who look remarkably like Beth.
“The Night House” is a gothic psychological horror film anchored by Hall’s remarkable performance. She turns the idea of the grieving widow on its head, playing Beth as indignant and unsympathetic. As she cycles through the stages of grief, focusing on the anger, it’s gut wrenching. An early scene with the mother of one of her students complaining about her son’s poor grade is brutal in its honesty laid bare. She is an open wound and Hall commits to the edgier aspects of the character, allowing the viewer a window into Beth’s world.
Director David Bruckner builds plenty of atmosphere and a sense of the strange that keeps the off-kilter story afloat despite the script’s leaps of logic. As Beth’s inner turmoil escalates the story adds in too many elements that don’t go anywhere like a second house in the woods and Beth’s doppelganger. As the script becomes more and more convoluted the intensity built in the film’s first half dissipates.
“The Night House” is a provocative look at grief with a great lead performance but is undone by a drawn-out approach to the story.
Mild mannered office worker Sid Straw, played by “Veep”/”Arrested Development” star Tony Hale in the new V.O.D. comedy “Eat Wheaties!,” claims to be a close acquittance of “Huger Games” star Elizabeth Banks.
“There is no such thing,” says her manager (Sarah Chalke).
As the cringe comedy begins Sid is unlucky in love, an expert in saying the wrong thing, misreading signals and trying too hard. “I understand that I am not the most exciting person out there,” he says. When he is named co-chair of the upcoming University of Pennsylvania’s reunion it is the beginning of a spiral. Setting up a Facebook page to publicize the event, he repeatedly messages Banks, an alumnus he claims to have been acquainted with decades ago.
Not realizing the posts are public, he bombards her account with a series of personal notes inviting her to the reunion. His many messages go unnoticed by the star but not her team, who file a restraining order against him. When the posts go viral—“What does that mean?” he asks.—his life unwinds as he is publicly and personally humiliated.
Based on the novel “The Locklear Letters” by Michael Kun, “Eat Wheaties!” (that was Banks’ catchphrase in school), is a mix of tragedy and comedy, made human by Hale’s performance. Sid could have been a collection of quirks but Hale paints him differently. Sid is a lovable loser and Hale plays him as a sweet, lonely guy, oblivious to the hole he’s digging for himself.
Hale is supported by a great supporting cast, including Paul Walter Hauser, Elisha Cuthbert, Lamorne Morris and Robbie Amell, who play off Sid’s social awkwardness with good-natured sympathy.
“Eat Wheaties!” is a tightly paced comedy which is more about kindness and doing the right thing than it is about knee slapping jokes. It is occasionally knee-slapping funny but the laughs come from kind-heartedness, not cruelty and that makes this quirky comedy a winner.
Talk about getting rich quick. The schemers in “The Hummingbird Project” have a plan to transmit digital stock exchange information faster than any other company. Like a millisecond or two faster, or the time it takes a hummingbird to do a single wing flap, just enough of a jump on everybody else to earn them millions of dollars.
When we first meet cousins Vincent and Anton (Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård) they work at a high stakes Wall Street trading firm under the ruthless Eva Torres (Salma Hayek). Vincent is the ideas guy; Anton the computer whiz.
Vincent understands that millions of dollars can be made with the right technology, a speedy delivery system that will connect the Kansas Electronic Exchange with the New York Stock Exchange. His outlandish idea is to tunnel from Kansas to New York, through mountains and under rivers and whatever else may be in the way, in a perfectly straight line. High-speed fibre optic cables connecting the two ends should be able to transfer info in 16 milliseconds.
With an investor (Frank Schorpion) on board to soak up the operation’s astronomical cost and an engineer (Michael Mando) to oversee the drilling, everything seems to be on track.
Trouble is, Anton can’t write a program that gets the speed below 17 milliseconds. In this case 16 vs. 17 milliseconds is like comparing the speed of a Lamborghini and a garden snail. Also, their old boss Eva, a billionaire who values loyalty above everything except money, is looking to beat them at their own game.
In the surface this is a quintessential story of American largess, the kind of big thinking that saw the country lead the world in advancement for much of the last century. Dig a little deeper and it becomes a cautionary tale of dialling up the speed of life for the sake of speed and a few dollars.
Guiding us on this philosophical journey are Vincent and Anton. Eisenberg begins the film doing a riff on his Zuckerberg portrayal from “The Social Network” but as the story goes on he drops the sociopathic quest for success to embark on a different, more human journey. (NO SPOILERS HERE) Vincent remains a big thinker but as it becomes clear he is chasing a windmill he gearshifts, allowing his human side to come to the surface.
Eisenberg impresses but it is Skarsgård who steals the show. Balding and paunchy, the heartthrob of “True Blood” has been put aside in favour of an eggheaded character prone to panic attacks and fits of rage. He is the film’s most vivid character and its nice to see Skarsgård push the limits of what he can do on-screen.
“The Hummingbird Project” sets its sights beyond the story of Wall Street intrigue to focus on something much bigger, the effects of global capitalism.
