Screen Notes: The Night House; The Protégé

The Night House dir David Bruckner

In The Night House, directed by David Bruckner, Rebecca Hall is excellent as nihilistic speech teacher Beth whose husband commits suicide, leaving her alone to grieve in their increasingly shadowy and mysterious lakeside home. When Hall steps out of the monster-sized arena of films like Godzilla vs King Kong and Iron Man 3 she delivers some impressive character roles in smaller films, rivaling the likes of Laura Dern in actively seeking out complex women to play. In 2016, Hall played an infamous, real-life victim of suicide, Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck in Christine, directed by Antonio Campos. Like The Night House, Christine was lucky to have an actor as engaging as Hall at the center of it (no disrespect to Robert Greene and Kate Lyn Sheil who made the other Christine Chubbuck movie from 2016, Kate Plays Christine, but Christine worked slightly better for me...as did Greene's next feature/documentary, Bisbee '17). While it's Hall's grounding performance in The Night House that pulls you into Beth's dark journey, a special mention should go to the atmospheric and dissonant score by Ben Lovett, as well as the choice to use the haunting refrain of Richard and Linda Thompson's song "Calvary Cross" as a jarring marker of the character's descent. 

The Night House is playing adeptly at some well-worn psychological horror tropes that ask you to tread the line between the psychological space of the central character and the realm of the supernatural, strongly echoing the eerie, early-70's cinema of something like Altman's early feature Images, or even John D. Hancock's Let's Scare Jessica to Death, and it's all the better for not seeming overly concerned with being a contemporary horror film operating as strict allegory or morality lesson. Yet, although I admire what I think is a desire to create a productive ambiguity in the final passages of the film, The Night House seems a bit muddled by the end. Without giving away too much, a somewhat clumsy "rescue" scene that occurs at the end compromises much of the atmosphere and rhythm of what comes before it. Likewise, while much of the design in the film is inspired and effective, as with the interior and sculptural elements of the house that seem to form a presence one moment and then dissipate into nothing the next--all hand-built by Beth's haunting husband, Owen (Evan Jonigkeit)--some of the more intense confrontations with the horrors of the "shadow" house are unclear dramatically, and, as a result, not as scary as they might be. The thrills of The Night House are set somewhat unproductively against the desire to put into play a serial killer narrative combined with some occult practices that never feel more interesting than the character of Beth, who is a truly refreshing twist on the "haunted widow" trope, already darker in her own right than anything her colleagues or friends can begin to comprehend. And while many elements of the performances and the design come together beautifully in The Night House, the story doesn't, needing either more or less clarification to get at a conclusion that truly clicks, and ultimately getting stuck somewhere in-between.

The Protégé dir Martin Campbell

An experienced director once gave me some simple and strong advice about casting: always try to find a way to cast the strongest actor in the central role. Maggie Q (Rush Hour 2, Mission Impossible III, Live Free or Die Hard) plays the central title role in The Protégé by noted James Bond director Martin Campbell. and I'd like to make a case for her as a proof-positive example of that casting advice in this underwhelming, but perfectly enjoyable, hitwoman action flick. While some may be quick to laud the more well-known supporting cast, including Michael Keaton as dangerous super-operative Rembrandt, Samuel L. Jackson as the titular protégé's ailing foster parent/co-hitman Moody, and Robert Patrick as the president of a Viet Nam-vet biker gang, I think the MVP easily goes to Maggie Q here, who brings equal gravitas to the dual role of antique bookseller and lethal weapon. She gives a convincing and incredibly physical performance that anchors a film that would otherwise quickly drift off into straight-to-dvd land. 

It helps that, on the page, the film doesn't rely in cheap ways on the character's femininity, and her particular drama isn't defined by that either. The Protégé, in this way, seems convincingly feminist to me, even wrapped inside a fairly macho genre exercise that contains lines like: "You point a gun at my pussy and then invite me to bed? I like your style." What's more uncomfortable and unforgiveable about the film is that the line is delivered to a character who is meant to be Q's male match--cool, smart, sexy, and deadly--and it's played by Michael Keaton. Yes, Rembrandt, the James Bond-esque operative, suave and manly enough to kick ass, spontaneously quote the rare verse of Edgar Allen Poe, and note the specifics of high-end women's footwear, is played by an actor who comes off as entirely outmatched by Q in every frame. This casting choice becomes an increasingly unfunny problem as the film progresses, especially since the action essentially builds to a showdown between the two. To be fair, there are a few Keaton performances I love, and I even think he managed to come out looking pretty great as the big bad in that Spider-Man movie, despite being awkwardly cast, but in The Protégé he's in way over his head. As for Samuel L. Jackson, he unfortunately looks a little too comfortable at work these days--since his character is somewhat wealthy from his exploits, receiving extravagant gifts and the like, part of the film comes off a little too much like outtakes from the actor's actual life, and the rest plays like Samuel L. Jackson quoting other Samuel L. Jackson roles. Aside from that, The Protégé doesn't pretend to be anything it isn't--the pace is quick, the action is sharply directed, and Maggie Q comes out on top.