The Night Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

The Night Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf August 5, 2021

“The Night” is an achievement in international filmmaking and distribution, with the Iranian/American co-production actually receiving a release in Iran, where the U.S. hasn’t been represented in over 40 years. It’s breakthrough work for co-writer/director Kourosh Ahari, who turns to the comfort of haunted house storytelling to help lure audiences into a strange study of guilt. “The Night” doesn’t add anything new to the genre, and Ahari isn’t attentive to pace, but he has a decent command of unnerving situations and unreality, finding ways to conjure chills and confusion between scenes of absolute stillness.

After an evening spent with close friends, Babak (Shahab Hosseini) and Neda (Niousha Noor) are ready to return to their Los Angeles home, getting their baby, Shabnam, back for bedtime. Babak is tipsy but gets behind the wheel, soon getting the couple lost when their GPS malfunctions. Fearful of staying on the roads, the couple decides to get a room at the Hotel Normandie, hoping to sleep off their problems. Unfortunately, overnight experiences only darken for Babak and Neda, who begin to see people who aren’t really there, moving in and out of reality, unable to escape the building, forcing them to decode what’s happening to them.

To enjoy “The Night” requires buying into the idea that Babak and Neda can’t find their way home after a dinner party. The husband is a little drunk and Neda has a suspended license, and after their GPS mysteriously craps out, they decide to get a room in a rough part of town, soon approached by a knowing homeless man. It takes some effort to find the reality of “The Night,” but Ahari is quick to move on to a more menacing nightmare realm for the couple and their baby, with Babak finding sleep impossible, dealing with insomnia and charged interactions with a hotel employee who’s witnessed his fair share of death.

“The Night” is a bit like “The Shining,” with emotional implosion driving the horror elements of the tale. There’s something coming for Babak and Neda, who deal with ghostly encounters and weird sounds, giving the production enough jump scares to satisfy genre audiences. However, such spooky events with the unknown grow repetitive in “The Night,” which doesn’t have enough mystery to support the entire film. Ahari has something more interesting in the motivation behind the dire hotel stay, with horrors finding home inside the heads of the characters, who are wrestling with experiences they cannot confront, and their decisions are coming back to punish them.

The Night Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The AVC encoded image (2.40:1 aspect ratio) presentation deals primarily with limited lighting and evening activities. Delineation is acceptable, but artifacting is present during the viewing experience, offering some blockiness and banding. Detail is strong, surveying skin particulars and hotel decoration. Room distances retain dimension. "The Night" works with a darker palette to best bring out the creepiness of the moment. Sickly yellow and green lighting is distinct. More varied hues are found on clothing and signage. Skintones are natural.

The Night Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track for "The Night" supports the feature's horror interests with a clear understanding of dialogue exchanges, which cover multiple languages and levels of emphasis. Performances are sharp. Scoring cues are direct, with deep bass notes to sustain unease, offering low-end response. Surrounds explore hotel and street atmospherics, and ghostly movement is noted, with the sounds of thumping feet delivering a few panning effects.

The Night Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• A Theatrical Trailer (1:59, HD) is included.

The Night Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Part of "The Night" gets into the ugliness of mistakes and fears, making for a fascinating psychological study. The rest of the picture is like spending time inside a Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights maze, with the hotel filling its hallways with mysterious and threatening visions the lead characters encounter as they try to survive the night. "The Night" is certainly interesting, but only in spurts, as Ahari doesn't have a wider imagination to support a feature-length examination of mental breakdowns, moving between a rich character study and the same old things-go-boo stuff.