Weekend Watch: Reminiscence, The Night House
Hugh Jackman goes digging in memories and Rebecca Hall's haunted by the past
Image Credit: Warner Bros.
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Hugh Jackman’s feeling noirish and Rebecca Hall’s getting spooked. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite
Memory can be a powerful thing. It can also be a faulty, unfocused beast at times, our minds playing tricks on us, or refusing to dredge up exactly where we left the car in that giant parking garage. It’s the big theme of Lisa Joy’s feature directorial debut Reminiscence, a mix of film noir, dystopian future, and emotional drama. Joy, the co-creator of TV’s Westworld adaptation, is an old hand at playing where memory and technology cross paths, and here she has dreamt up a world that feels entirely plausible. It’s the near future, and climate change has led to shocking sea level rises, swallowing some cities and leaving others compromised trouble spots, their denizens switching to a nocturnal schedule to avoid the blazing heat of the day. Oh, and in case you were thinking that the climate crisis encouraged the planet’s population to work together and fix their issues… Have you met the human race?
Our guide into this world is Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), a war veteran who works alongside Thandiwe Newton’s Watts as, well, a guide to people who are in search of old memories. As Nick’s narration explains, the present is so bad that many are looking to get lost in the past, happy memories a solace when your life has turned to crud. Nick has a fancy piece of technology (originally designed to aid interrogations, and still used in criminal cases) that lets him use his voice to take people back to a desired moment. There are other uses too – Rebecca Ferguson’s Mae, for example, arrives hoping he can help her find her lost keys. Mae is what noir stories would commonly describe as a “femme fatale” and it’s not all that surprising (and plot required) that Nick becomes infatuated with her. But don’t forget the “Fatale” part.
Joy and her creative collaborators are adept at crafting a world that is both recognizable and skewed and has fun with some of the conventions of hard-boiled detectives working the streets (and the memory lanes) to figure out a mystery. It won’t surprise you that there’s much more to Mae than meets the eye, and Nick is soon drawn into a criminal conspiracy that puts everyone in danger. But more than just a crime thriller, this also has the feeling of a Christopher Nolan movie (albeit without some of the colder precision), which is also not so shocking since Joy is his sister-in-law.
It chunters along through a few predictable turns and some of the noir dialogue is so heavy-handed it could break a table, but this is never less than enjoyable, particularly in the capable hands of Jackman and co. He pulls off the haunted main character well, while Ferguson is typically great and Newton, while not enjoying the same level of character depth as she does on Westworld, is still able to be both emotionally complex and tough without the two sides in conflict.
Reminiscence won’t change the world when it comes to either sci-fi or noir, but it should stick in your mind longer than some other recent blockbusters.
Reminiscence is in UK and US cinemas now, and on HBO Max in the States.
Image Credit: Searchlight Pictures
Loss and memory are also on the mind of The Night House, though for David Bruckner’s chiller, the driving force is to unsettle/scare both Rebecca Hall’s character and the audience as much as possible. It’s not always successful, but it certainly finds the tone for a lot of its running time.
Hall plays Beth, who is mired in grief and trauma following the recent suicide of her husband, Owen. Spending lonely days and nights at the lake house he built for them, she’s freaked out by a series of strange occurrences – she’s hearing odd sounds, seeing things in the shadows, and even receiving mysterious texts that appear to come from her husband. While that might prompt most people to either A) sell the place and move to somewhere less isolated or B) burn the place down and, yes, move to somewhere less isolated, Beth’s curiosity and desire to figure out some mysterious parts of her husband’s recent path compel her to dig deeper. What she discovers is a strange, reverse copy of the house on the other side of the lake, and spookiness ahoy.
Bruckner adopts a Hitchcockian tone for this one; to such a degree that you almost expect the late horror veteran to cameo in the film. Hall carries the lion’s share of the story and the screen time, and she manages to make Beth a character you root for even as she’s cold and distant to some and makes some very Horror Movie choices as the story drifts along. Alongside writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, the director coaxes out some effective tension, slowly turning the dial up as the situation becomes ever creepier.
On the problematic side, there is the addiction to hitting the LOUD NOISES button approximately 10 or so more times than are warranted, and once the last act rolls around, the pent-up terror drains somewhat as scenes become a little silly (despite Hall’s best efforts).
The Night House might put you off going to live in stylish-yet-odd lake houses for life, but if I’m honest, that feels like good life advice. As a scary movie, it certainly has its moments, even if the end lets the rest of the film down.
The Night House is in UK and US cinemas now.