Night’s End Review

PLOT: A shut-in seeks the help of an author and a YouTuber when he comes to suspect that his new apartment is haunted.

REVIEW: Night’s End marks the second collaboration between the Shudder streaming service and director Jennifer Reeder, as Reeder previously helmed the wrap-around story in the anthology film V/H/S/94 – which was a major hit for Shudder when they released it last year. Night’s End might have been better off if it had been cut down and included in an anthology itself, because as a feature film it ends up feeling quite underwhelming.

Night’s End is only 82 minutes as it is, but it feels substantially longer than that. The movie proceeds at a snail’s pace, and shows us the daily routine of shut-in Ken Barber (Geno Walker) way too many times. We know, he tends to his plants and drinks a mixture of coffee and Pepto Bismol (with a higher percentage of the stomach soother being added to the cup day by day), we didn’t really need to see this play out over and over. Ken is an interesting character at his core – he tells friends and family that he’s recovering from the nervous breakdown he had a couple years ago, while we can see that he’s just wallowing in his neuroses – but his story isn’t handled in a very interesting way here.

This is very much a movie for the Covid age; the action takes place entirely within Ken’s apartment, which he is afraid to leave. All of his interactions are done through Zoom – whether he’s talking to his buddy Terry (comedian Felonious Munk), his ex-wife Kelsey (Kate Arrington), or other characters who become involved along the way. Except for Kelsey, everyone Ken interacts with is alone, and the movie is primarily made up of scenes shot through webcams. Kelsey is occasionally joined on camera by her new husband Isaac, played by Michael Shannon… and it feels like the only reason Shannon is in this movie is because he happens to be married to Arrington in real life. So Night’s End gave the couple the chance to sit in front of a webcam together and goof off for a little bit.

Seeking a way to earn income without stepping out his door, Ken decides to try his hand at making YouTube videos. He’s not good at it and doesn’t get many views, but then he finds a hook: it seems his new apartment might be haunted. And it turns out that the building does have a tragic history he wasn’t aware of. Now here’s a subject he can make videos about that might get some views. The paranormal activity Ken deals with isn’t exactly on Poltergeist levels (or even Paranormal Activity level), but his amateur, housebound dealings with the entity sneaking around in his apartment do allow for more characters to enter the picture.

Those characters are a YouTuber known as Dark Corners (Daniel Kyri), associate Lyden Knight (Theo Germaine), and an author who has written a book about “ghosts and their personas”, Colin Albertson (Lawrence Grimm). Albertson is sure to be a divisive character, because everything around him in this movie is very low-key, but Grimm chews the scenery with his over-the-top performance. Then takes the film in some unexpected directions. Some viewers will find Albertson to be completely out of place, but I was glad to have him around to liven up a movie that was feeling really dull by the time he arrived.

I enjoyed watching Grimm camp it up, and everyone else did well with their more grounded performances. This was my first time seeing Geno Walker in anything, and I was impressed by him as a lead actor. The script by Brett Neveu just gave him underwhelming material to work with.

It all builds up to an ending that didn’t feel worth the long, slow journey it took to get there. It would have been much more satisfying as the ending to a segment in an anthology movie, and Night’s End would have been much more effective if it was cut down to about half its length.

Night’s End is now available to watch on Shudder.

Jennifer Reeder

BELOW AVERAGE

5