The Night
Kourosh Ahari has made a thriller that plays on the anxieties of insomnia and feeling trapped in a single location. It’s an endless night for this couple and their baby, trying to get some sleep in their hotel room while being plagued by disturbances that seem improbable because there is, supposedly, no one else in the hotel. It’s a smart execution of its premise, even if it feels repetitive after 105 minutes. There are some tense, powerful moments, though, that make it worth checking out.
Babek (Shahab Hosseini) and Neda (Niousha Noor) are in town, and have spent the evening at his brother’s house spending time together and drinking and having fun. They are ready to head back to the hotel for the night, so they get their young child and leave. The trip back to the hotel seems endless, just the first instance of time seeming to slow down for the couple. They make it back to their hotel, which has the atmosphere and design of a ’40s detective movie, with a receptionist (George Maguire) who speaks like he knows more than he’s letting on. The couple gets up to their room, but when their baby needs something at 3am, the neverending night seems to begin.
Considering this film further, Ahari has made a riff on Bergman’s “Hour of the Wolf,” another horror film about a couple whose conscious is haunted by the night time. Guilt, past traumas and anxieties play into fracturing the relationships of both couples, although in “The Night,” the terrors appear to have manifest themselves in a supernatural way rather than solely a psychological. Because so much of the film takes place in the hotel, and in the car, it feels like similar beats of terror are hit time and time again, but in the collective impact of the ones it lands, whether it’s revelations between the couple or a jump scare when a police officer arrives at the room, “The Night” delivers some gripping tension that makes it memorable to watch.
