Disc Reviews

3^rd Night is one of those films that sneaks up on you.  It’s shot on a low budget, there are no big named actors involved, and it doesn’t have a big studio backing.  It’s the kind of film that seems to be released hoping that by word of mouth or sheer luck, people will stumble upon this film.  You go to your random Wal-Mart or Target and you see these small, independent titles all the time, and I’ve always wondered how many of these are picked up as a cold buy, simply from the customer looking at the cover and reading the box. 3^rd Night is a film that is going to have to go through this struggle, but for those who do decide to pick this up or find it on some other platform, it’ll be a delightful little surprise.  It’s a 71-minute horror fest that is better than you’d expect despite having some strange flaws that left me questioning some of the film’s choices; despite that it still works.

This is Adam Gravely’s first time directing a feature film, and for the film he also serves as a writer, producer, and an editor, so obviously this is a project that meant a lot to him.  It’s a good thing he has stuck with this film through the whole process, because there is a lot going on in this film when it comes to what kind of horror it is, and for some filmmakers the struggle with the numerous sub-genres would usually cause the filmmaker to just stick with one direction, and that would have severely hurt the uniqueness of this picture.

Over the years there have been attempts to adapt Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting at Hill House, but each attempt seemed to fall short of what the book accomplished. So when Netflix announced that they were going to be attempting to turn the novel into a ten-episode TV series, well, to be honest, it didn’t exactly get me excited. Helming the show is Mike Flanagan, who had some success with Netflix before when directing Gerald’s Game and is currently directing Doctor Sleep, a sequel to Stephen King’s The Shining.  It wasn’t till a couple weeks ago when a came across a trailer for The Haunting of Hill House that I was convinced that perhaps I should give this show a shot.  Once it hit the streaming service and I watched the first episode “Steven Sees a Ghost”, well, I was hooked, and what unfolded over the course of the season resulted in an exceptional television experience.

Part of what makes the show works is that the story unfolds in two separate timelines as it follows the Crain family through the early 90’s and today. In the modern day the story follows the five Crain siblings though each episode and at the start seems to focus on one sibling at a time while flashing back to their time as kids growing up at the Hill House.  Steven (Michiel Huisman) is the oldest and has made a career for himself after writing about his families experiences at the Hill House, though the book resulted in plenty of turmoil that the show takes its time getting into. There is Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser), who runs a funeral home and is raising a family of her own along with her sister Theodora (Kate Siegel) who lives in a home on the property.  Then there are the twins Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and Nell (Victoria Pedretti) who seem to be the most troubled from their experiences growing up. To a degree this does have a This is Us feel to it, but there isn’t much cheer to be found here; there isn’t much one can call heartwarming in this family. Instead these are all siblings who are coming to terms with some very dark experiences from their childhood.