The Night (2020 film)
The Night | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster | |
آن شب | |
Directed by | Kourosh Ahari |
Written by |
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Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Maz Makhani |
Edited by | Kourosh Ahari |
Music by | Nima Fakhrara |
Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 105 minutes[1] |
Countries |
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Languages |
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Box office | $44,041[2] |
The Night (Persian: آن شب, lit. 'That Night') is a 2020 psychological horror-thriller film directed by Kourosh Ahari in his directorial debut.[3] It is a co-production between Iran and the United States, starring Shahab Hosseini, Niousha Noor, Leah Oganyan, and George Maguire. The film centers on an Iranian couple living in the United States, who are imprisoned in a Los Angeles hotel.
The film had its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on January 20, 2020. It was released in the United States on January 29, 2021, by IFC Midnight, and in Iran on February 24, 2021, by Mammoth Pictures and Ayat Film Company. It received positive reviews from critics.
Plot
[edit]![]() | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (October 2022) |
Babak Naderi and his wife Neda, an Iranian couple living in the United States with their one-year-old daughter Shabnam, are driving home after visiting some friends. However, the car's navigation system starts malfunctioning, and they end up getting lost. After driving around for a couple of hours, they decide to spend the night at the Hotel Normandie. Babak almost gets into a physical altercation with a homeless elderly man while entering the hotel, but the man vanishes after Babak and Neda check into the hotel. The receptionist informs them that only one suite is available, and that the hotel doors are locked at night.
Babak and Neda begin to notice strange events during their stay at the hotel. Neda is woken by Shabnam, and someone knocks on the room door, saying "Mommy". Upon checking the hallway, Neda sees a small child, who disappears after going down a hallway.
Babak is also woken by Shabnam, and prepares a bottle of milk with the help of the hotel receptionist, who tells him about the various tragic events he has witnessed. Babak sees the homeless man again outside the hotel, and sees the reflection of a strange woman next to him. When he turns around, he is confronted by Neda, who tells him to go to sleep and that she will bring Shabnam up to their hotel room. However, he later finds Shabnam still on the ground floor, and Neda tells him that she was asleep.
Later, Babak is startled upon seeing the woman from earlier standing in front of him. After Babak and Neda hear thumping noises above them, Babak goes up to the hotel roof, but does not find anyone. He calls the police, saying that someone is harassing them.
A police officer arrives, but he is skeptical of the couple's claims of people disturbing them, and asks Babak if there is something he is not telling him. There is a knock on the room door, and Babak finds the same police officer there when answering the door. The incident unnerves the couple so much that they decide to leave the hotel. However, Babak forgets the car keys, and he returns to the hotel room to get them while Neda waits near the car.
While waiting near the car, Neda is confronted by the homeless man, who tells her in Persian, "They hear the truth, morning comes." Babak gives the keys to Neda from the room. As Neda waits for Babak in the car with Shabnam, the child from earlier asks her to let him play with his sister.
Meanwhile, Babak finds a dead woman in the room's bathtub after noticing a wedding ring on the floor, and gets to an elevator. The elevator is briefly jammed while Babak is still inside, and the woman from earlier asks if he remembers. Neda returns to the hotel and Babak lets her in after getting out of the elevator, but he finds that he is unable to unlock the hotel doors from the receptionist's desk. The power then goes out. Babak tries to signal passersby for help, but the only people outside the hotel are the child and the woman seen earlier.
In their room, Babak calls his friend Farhad to get help, but Farhad tells him that "there is no way out". Neda is then confronted by the child, who asks her why she hasn't told Babak what she did, and repeatedly demands that she "say it". Neda breaks down in tears and confesses to Babak that she realized she was pregnant five years earlier while Babak was away from home, and that she aborted the child because she didn't want to have a child without a father. The hotel's power is then restored.
Babak tries to unlock the hotel doors again, but is unsuccessful. Neda demands to know his secret; she has realized that the power came back on because she revealed her secret, and that Babak must divulge his secret as well if they are to leave the hotel. Babak refuses to do so, and he heads deeper into the hotel to find another way out.
While searching for a way out, Babak is confronted by the woman, whose name is Sophia, and it is revealed that he cheated on Neda with her, and lied that he would leave Neda to be with her. In a panic, he ends up stabbing Neda in the stomach by accident. While looking for Shabnam, Babak gets transported to a hospital, where he finds Sophia's body in the morgue. He stabs himself at his arm's tattoo with a scalpel, and heads towards the exit, which leads into a forest, in search of Shabnam.
Babak then wakes up in the hotel room at around 3 am, and finds Neda and Shabnam sleeping peacefully next to him. He goes to the bathroom and sees that his reflection in the mirror is acting independently of him; the reflection turns around so that its back is facing him, reproducing a hotel painting seen earlier in the film. As Babak looks at his reflection, a tear falls from his eye.
Cast
[edit]- Shahab Hosseini as Babak Naderi
- Niousha Noor as Neda
- Gia Mora as Sara
- Elester Latham as displaced man
- Kathreen Khavari as Elahe
- George Maguire as hotel receptionist
- Cara Fuqua as dark figure
- Armin Mehr
- Steph Martinez as Sofia
- Leah Oganyan as Shabnam
- Michael Graham as police officer
- Alain Ali Washnevsky as Mohsen
Production
[edit]The film is a co-production between Iran and the United States.[3] The film was shot at the Hotel Normandie, a Wilshire district boutique hotel that was built in 1926.[4]
Release
[edit]The film had its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on January 20, 2020.[3] It was released in theaters and via video on demand in the United States on January 29, 2021, by IFC Midnight.[5] The film was released in Iran on February 24, 2021, by Mammoth Pictures and Ayat Film Company;[6] it is the first American-made film to receive permission for theatrical release in Iran since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.[3] The film received permission for release in Iran prior to the Trump administration's new sanctions on Iran in late 2018.[3]
Reception
[edit]Box office
[edit]The Night grossed $26,114 in North America and $17,927 in other territories for a total worldwide gross of $44,041.[2]
Critical reception
[edit]The film received positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 79% based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The site's critics' consensus reads, "The dramatic heft and dread of The Night delivers haunting supernatural frights – and an impressive feature directorial debut for Kourosh Ahari."[7] On Metacritic, the film holds an aggregated score of 68 out of 100 based on 10 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[8]
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film a score of 4 stars out of 5, writing: "there's nothing obviously new about The Night. But it is put together with great style, force and visual imagination, and Ahari deftly uses the couple's baby to ratchet up the tension."[9] Richard Roeper, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film a score of 3 stars out of 4. He noted some similarities the film had with The Shining, and wrote: "Although director Kourosh Ahari is never reluctant to embrace standard-issue horror movie elements ... "The Night" has an aura of almost beautiful stillness, interspersed with moments of shock."[4]
Carlos Aguilar, writing for the Los Angeles Times, described the film as "consistently terrifying", and noted the film's similarities to The Shining and Under the Shadow, but added: "Ahari finds his own narrative rhythm, though it feels sluggish in a final act that fluctuates from frantic to meditative." He concluded that the film "is at its most effectively unsettling when the focus is to evoke fear as opposed to when it physically shows what's haunting the characters trapped in their respective secret tragedies."[10]
Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film a score of 3.5 stars out of 4, describing it as "a knockout debut—so assured that it stands on its own as a filmmaking achievement apart from its historical significance", and adding: "But what's ultimately most impressive ... is how it manages to feel big despite being a small film, filling up the screen with atmosphere, performance, tension, and a sense of style even though it was shot quickly and cheaply in available locations". He concluded: "It's as if "The Night" is constantly playing on what we think we know about this kind of movie and recalibrating its approach in every scene to keep us as unsettled as its lead couple, who checked into the marriage crisis equivalent of the Hotel California and worry they might never leave."[11]
Teo Bugbee, writing for The New York Times, was more critical of the film, saying: "The repetition of the visions and the film's deliberate pace gives the audience too much time to guess which betrayals haunt Babak and Neda, and this lack of emotional suspense hampers the horror."[12]
Awards
[edit]Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref(s) |
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Grimmfest | 2021 | Best Feature Film | Kourosh Ahari | Won | |
Molins film festival | 2020 | Best director | Kourosh Ahari | Won | [13][14] |
Best actor | Shahab Hosseini | Won | |||
Best Screenplay | Kourosh Ahari | Won | |||
ReFrame | 2021 | Narrative & Animated Feature | The Night | Won |
Paraguayan dubbing
[edit]- Diego Cáceres as Babak Naderi
- Zuny Acosta as Neda Naderi
- Aye Frutos as Shabnam Naderi / Sofia / 5 Year-Old Boy
- Argüello Dúo as Hotel Receptionist
- Juan Ángel Vera as Police Officer
- Rafael Sandoval as Farhad
- Hugo-Kun as Displaced Man
- Laura Bozzano as Elahe
- Rocío Almada as Sara
- Kosmar Pardob as Mohsen
- Natya Villalba as 5 Year-Old Boy
References
[edit]- ^ Kuipers, Richard (October 27, 2020). "'The Night' Review: Farsi-Language Horror Thriller Set in an L.A. Hotel Delivers Classy Scares". Variety. Archived from the original on January 10, 2021. Retrieved July 23, 2021.
- ^ a b "The Night". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on February 13, 2021. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
- ^ a b c d e Ramos, Dino-Ray (July 14, 2020). "Kourosh Ahari's Thriller 'The Night' Becomes First U.S.-Produced Film To Receive License For Theatrical Release In Iran". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on January 11, 2021. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
- ^ a b Roeper, Richard (January 27, 2021). "'The Night': A hotel horror story to recommend with few reservations". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on July 23, 2021. Retrieved July 23, 2021.
- ^ "The Night". IFC Films. Archived from the original on January 12, 2021. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
- ^ Ramos, Dino-Ray (February 23, 2021). "Kourosh Ahari's Thriller 'The Night' Sets Theatrical Release In Iran, Becomes First U.S.-Produced Film To Hit Iranian Theaters In 40 Years". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on July 23, 2021. Retrieved July 23, 2021.
- ^ "The Night (2020)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Archived from the original on January 28, 2021. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
- ^ "The Night Reviews". Metacritic. Archived from the original on November 28, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
- ^ Bradshaw, Peter (March 30, 2021). "The Night review – eerie check-in at an LA hotel". The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 19, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
- ^ Aguilar, Carlos (January 29, 2021). "Review: Things go bump and more in consistently terrifying 'The Night'". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on July 17, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
- ^ Seitz, Matt Zoller (January 29, 2021). "The Night movie review & film summary (2021)". RogerEbert.com. Archived from the original on September 22, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
- ^ Bugbee, Teo (January 28, 2021). "'The Night' Review: Late Checkout". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on July 17, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
- ^ TerrorMolins (November 18, 2020). "TerrorMolins 2020 Awards". Terror Molins. Archived from the original on July 18, 2021. Retrieved July 18, 2021.
- ^ "سه جایزه برای فیلم "آن شب" در اسپانیا". سلام سینما. Archived from the original on June 8, 2021. Retrieved July 18, 2021.
External links
[edit]- 2020 films
- 2020 directorial debut films
- 2020 horror thriller films
- 2020 multilingual films
- 2020 psychological thriller films
- 2020s English-language films
- 2020s psychological horror films
- American horror thriller films
- American multilingual films
- American psychological horror films
- American psychological thriller films
- Asian-American horror films
- Films set in hotels
- Films set in Los Angeles
- Films shot in Los Angeles
- Iranian-American films
- Iranian horror films
- Iranian multilingual films
- 2020s Persian-language films
- 2020s American films
- English-language horror thriller films