The Long Night

What's that saying about there being no such thing as a new story, just the way you tell them? That said, some archetypal stories are more specific, more linear than others. When you think about the hero's journey, that's a massive grouping that gives you a lot of leeway. But when you go "couple go to some remote rural location, probably in the South, and find themselves trapped in a house by a bunch of animal-skull-wearing cultists that want to bring about the apocalypse," that's a whole subgenre, one that seems like it would be worn out by now. So The Long Night would seem to have a hard task to have anything interesting new to say. It arguably doesn't, but its take on those conventions is a cut above the sinister norm.

Foundling Grace (Taylor-Compton, of Rob Zombie's Halloween) and her Ivy League MBA boyfriend Jack (Funk) are the ones taking a trip to the occult South, but they're not headed to some muck-encrusted swamp. The NYC duo find themselves in surprisingly salubrious surroundings when they're summoned to what she thinks may be the next step towards being reunited with the parents who mysteriously abandoned her as a child. What could be her familial and ancestral home turns out to be a recently renovated plantation house, surprisingly well-tended but seemingly empty: well, aside from the silent cultists on the well-manicured lawn and, no, turning the sprinklers on is not going to be enough to see them off.

It's those little twists that make The Long Night intriguing, but it's veteran music video director Rich Ragsdale who adds a murderous supernatural tension. The script by Tooth and Nail writer Mark Young and newcomer Robert Sheppe (developing a sequel to Taylor-Compton and Ragsdale's previous collaboration, Thai-set chiller Ghosthouse) has the common sense and good grace not to spend too long in teasing the audience about the deranged demon worshippers out in the yard. Their powers are revealed before their intentions (even if those aren't too hard to work out), allowing Ragsdale to spring some gnarly surprises on the duo and some genuinely creative imagery. At points when other filmmakers would simply have the pair fleeing or hiding from rampaging diabolists, he's prepared to slow the grind to an almost dreamlike pace. So while The Long Night may not be revolutionary, it's definitely got its own dark magic.