“The Night House” is an acting tour de force in a so-so horror film. While the film has a wonderful sense of ambiguity about the story being told, it fundamentally is just not that scary.

We meet Beth (Rebecca Hall) as she is entering her lakeside home. We soon learn that Beth’s husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) of 14 years has committed suicide with a handgun. He left a note that told Beth that she would be safe now.

The irony of Owen’s suicide is that Beth was the one suffering from depression and who had been consoled by him. Now in her grief she begins consuming alcohol in quantity.

We don’t discover much about Beth’s personal life. When she was 17, she underwent a near-death experience as a result of a car accident. She claims that at the time, she experienced no light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel vision, but rather a sense of absolute nothingness. She teaches at a school, and her best friend is her colleague Claire (Sarah Goldberg). Whether caused by her grief or not, she rarely socializes.

Unsettling things start to happen. As Beth sleeps one night, she hears a loud knock on the door. When she goes downstairs, there is no one. In the morning, she discovers bare footprints on her dock.

Soon other manifestations occur in and outside her home. She sees several white-clad figures run by her and disappear into the lake. She hears a loud gunshot outside which her neighbor does not. The footprints reappear. Loud, unnerving noises occur at random times.

When Owen appears to text her on her phone, she begins to investigate his past. Scrolling through pictures on his phone and laptop, Beth finds photos of women who look like her. One works in a bookstore from which Owen frequented.

Going through Owen’s possessions, she discovers comments about reverse floor plans. There also are drawings of what appear to be mazes.

Beth also has been seeing a light from across the shore on land that cannot be developed as it is government land. In the daytime, she wanders over there, only to discover her neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall). He is worried about her mental health and invites her to lunch.

Brushing him off politely, Beth continues her search and discovers a dilapidated house under construction. It has a creepy statue inside of a human form penetrated by various spikes. She later finds a reference to this in one of Owen’s books.

Confronting her neighbor Mel, he admits that he saw Owen on the far side of the lake with another woman. He again persuades Beth to let things be.

Beth goes to the bookstore to try to find out more about Owen’s orders. While the owner helps her, she notices one of the women in the photos Owen took. Madelyne (Stacy Martin) initially pretends to have no knowledge of Owen. Later, in a private meeting with Beth, she admits that she was waiting for Owen to make a move on her, but instead he tried to strangle her. But he relented and she never saw him again.

Is Owen trying to contact her from the dead? Is this somehow related to her near-death experience? Or is she simply imagining the strange happenings in her home?

The ambiguity of the film is that it is possible that Beth is an unreliable narrator. No person in the real world experiences the scary situations that she does. She suffers from depression, is grieving, and drinks heavily.

There is no doubt, of course, that Owen left pictures of women who looked like her, and in fact knows at least one of them.. He also left weird notes and books lying around. But these have real-world explanations. Is Beth hallucinating as her anxiety grows?

Of course there is a danger in making her an unreliable narrator. She might be seen as the misogynist trope of the “hysterical woman.” But I think that even if she is experiencing reality differently through her own lens, then this is no different than what we see in Anthony Hopkins’ performance in “The Father.”

In any case, the pacing of the film is poor. There are long stretches of Beth doing discovery or engaging in the few social activities that she does participate in. Because she has very little backstory and few social interactions, Beth is not a character who is inherently fascinating in everyday life. These scenes dilute the tension in the film.

There are other horror conventions that I did not care for. One is that everything scary happens at night, when there is no logical explanation for this. Another is that Beth, when she enters the dilapidated house for the first time, shouts out to see if anyone is there. Apparently Beth has never seen any horror films or she would know that this is inviting trouble. Later when she discovers bodies in the basement of the dilapidated house, she doesn’t even call the police but calls her neighbor Mel instead.

The movie at one point comes perilously close to misogyny when the bodies of dead women are discovered in a basement of the dilapidated house and we see an image of Owen assaulting one of the lookalikes. This reminded me of the recent “The Invisible Man” where Kate Moss’s character escapes an abusive relationship only to have it recur with invisible assailants while everyone thinks she is crazy. One has to tread carefully when using the trope of women being victimized by men to sell movies.

Even when the scares occur in “The Night House,” they are more startling than scary. There is a pervasive eeriness which I liked, but which I feel was never fully developed. In particular I think that more could have been made of the reverse floor-plan idea.

Rebecca Hall gives a standout performance as Beth. She is virtually omnipresent, which emphasizes that the picture is being seen through her point-of-view. Her portrayal of grief is very real, and her reactions to strange events consistent and credible.

The film has great set design. I loved the house and its furnishings. The sound effects are excellent for the scary scenes as is the cinematography.

“The Night House” has its moments but ultimately fails to deliver on the goods as evidenced by its weak conclusion.

Two-and-a-half out of five stars

Reeling from the unexpected death of her husband, Beth (Rebecca Hall) is left alone in the lakeside home he built for her. She tries as best she can to keep it together – but then nightmares come. Disturbing visions of a presence in the house calling to her, beckoning her with a ghostly allure. Against the advice of her friends, she begins digging into her husband’s belongings, yearning for answers. What she finds are secrets both strange and disturbing – a mystery she’s determined to unravel.

Starring: Rebecca Hall, Sarah Goldberg, Vondie Curtis Hall, Evan Jonigkeit, and Stacy Martin
Directed by: David Bruckner