I'm slightly embarrassed to confess I can't usually get into horror films and ghost stories. Either they're too stupid - an endless string of things going bump in the dark - or they're too damn effective, and I end up with sleepless nights. No fun either way.
But I can't deny that when they're done well, they do the business.
Photo: Screenshot
When I say "done well" I think what I mean is the bare minimum of mystical hocus pocus, haunted video recorders, random monsters from another dimension and explanations involving ancient Indian burial grounds.
It certainly helps when a film stars someone like Rebecca Hall.
Hall comes from English stage royalty, and her undoubted skills come in handy in The Night House, where she's in virtually every scene.
She plays Beth, a teacher who was recently - and unexpectedly - widowed when her husband Owen killed himself.
Why did he do it? Beth and Owen's life appeared to be blissfully happy. They were even doing up their new house by the lake.
Owen gave no warning or explanation of any problems - certainly not in his farewell note…
"You were right. Nothing's after you" What could that possibly mean?
Beth obsessively pores over old home movies. Maybe there are clues that she's been missing?
There are strange, unexpected noises in Beth's house, particularly at night. And there's something else. Beth has started walking in her sleep.
The spooky thing being that Owen used to do that too, shortly before his death.
Could Owen have been leading some sort of secret life? Beth's friends urge her to let it go. Remember the best things about her marriage, accept that some secrets will remain hidden…
But Beth can't do that, particularly when she stumbles on another house across the lake - a house very like hers but strangely different.
The Night House is a smart haunted-house mystery, that keeps its own secrets until well into the film.
Star Hall is terrific in it, taking us with her as she tries to make sense of events that seem to defy a rational explanation.
The cunningly devised script delivers well-earned chills, and it's to the credit of The Night House that it plays scrupulously fair.
It avoids the usual infuriating moment in so many lesser horror films where a patched-up explanation insults the intelligence of the most credulous of audiences.
No, this is good scary fun, of the kind that Victorian masters like M R James, Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson used to cook up.
And even if, like me, you're not usually a ghost story fan, The Night House is well worth chasing up.
