Popular reviews

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  Review by Daniel Paucar ★½

  The shining pero con misticismo islámico y bien zzz

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★

  While not taking anything away from the performances in this feature directorial debut from Kourosh Ahari, which are quite strong, particularly from Shahab Hosseini (A Separation), the bona fide star in The Night is the sound editing. It follows Iranian-American couple Babak (Hosseini) and Neda (Niousha Jafarian) along with their one-year-old daughter, who, after a night of drinks and dinner at a friends house, find themselves trapped, unable to leave a mysterious hotel that hungers for their secrets.

  Maz Makhani's cinematography deliberately accentuates the hotel's unnatural presentation, boosting the film's general ambience as dark rooms and shadows become the dominant order of the day. The script utilises classic motifs of the horror genre, many of which are now unfortunately eligible…

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  Review by Joe Tomastik ★★★ 9

  Thanks to Film Independent for the screening of this movie. Its technical qualities are far and away where its strengths lie, utilizing many effective camera and framing tricks to create a claustrophobic, hellishly dreamlike sensation without distracting from the more simplistically creepy nature of what happens. As for the reasons why it’s happening, they do work, even though there isn’t anything that deep to it in the end. The film effectively conveys throughout how troubled this marriage is, but the payoff, while great on paper, is a little too simplistic in its execution to make all the time spent feel completely worthwhile. I do like the ending, though, and how it suggests that the real inescapable terror for the main…

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  Review by Steph_h ★★ 3

  Good atmosphere but just not particularly mysterious or creepy enough ... one of the reveals is also a on slippery slope of crossing into some tricky territory and I feel a little off put ... I’ll spoil it below for those who are curious 

  
  
  

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  So this woman is haunted by the fact that she an abortion and it’s not entirely clear to
  Me if she haunted because she indeed did soemthing wrong and is being judged OR she just feels guilty .. Its ok to feel bad about having an abortion but it’s not ok to be judged by an evil hotel and mentally tortured over it .. that should’ve been handled very clearly and it’s not ..

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  Review by Josh ★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Nightstream film #4:

  Ostensibly punishing the female lead for getting an abortion is super shitty and marked the descent into a pretty mediocre ending of an otherwise super spooky and promising movie. I'm really disappointed.

  Also have to give a shoutout to the actor who played the cop and however they managed to make his voice sound so...eerie and inhuman? It was super weird and absolutely my favorite part of the movie.

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  Review by Ashton ★★

  How to ruin an otherwise competently produced film with a ludicrous and bad-faith morality play as a hinging narrative beat: exhibit A.

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  Review by exorcismemily ★★½ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I wanted to love this movie, but I am annoyed by the unnecessary anti-abortion storyline, and it kind of soured me on the whole movie. I know everyone handles things differently, but equating the abortion secret to Babak being a garbage person overall (including his secret of cheating, and I'm still not entirely clear on if he killed someone or not) seemed out of line. I was annoyed by one of the ghosts being the full-grown child that "could have been" haunting Neda for what she did, and for not telling her husband when they weren't even together when it happened. Nope.

  I really liked this movie until it went in this direction. I wasn't expecting it, and I'm so…

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  Review by Jay ★½

  Now that twist was some pure some ol bullshit material right there 🥸

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  Review by Waldo ★★★★

  A young Iranian couple with a baby. They have a pleasant night out with friends. They get on their car, it's getting late, the ride home is getting tense, they decide to stay the night in a hotel called the Normandie. The place is dead empty, there's a creepy man in the reception, all they want to do is sleep. They'll get zero sleep and the place turns into a terrifying maze, an endless loop, a perfect example of how to lose your mind, completely. Director Ahari is a skilled and forceful director. Made me dizzy, made me question everything. Where are they? Who's there? Who's real? Doesn't rely on jump scares, only real scares, this was one spooky, haunted place kind of flick. A superior ghost story.

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  Review by Auteur ½

  Wow. In the last 24 hours I have watched two completely different horror films that exist at opposite ends of the spectrum, but which both typify the absolute worst tendencies of the genre on video on demand. I haven't logged the other one yet, but I just finished The Night, and oh god what the fuck? This film is 100 minutes of people walking down dark hallways. There is about ten minutes, no, five minutes, of actual story here, and the rest is "hallways horror", a trend I have been decrying in my Letterboxd reviews for years now. The last half hour of The Night literally follows the main character walking through various hallways of a creepy hotel, then down…

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  Review by ✨Angelica Jade Bastién🔮

  fine.

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  Review by Brandon Stanwyck ★★

  There’s a reveal at which point it becomes painfully apparent that this movie was written by men