The Long Night - Deep Dive Into This Cult Horror Flick!
These are a few of my favorite things: folk horror, creepy cults, long forgotten and malevolent gods, and couples stuck in a house in the middle of nowhere. This past February’s The Long Night is a yummy, creepy, atmospheric brew of all four. Written by Robert Sheppe and Mark Young, directed by Rich Ragsdale, and released just a few months back, it has gone largely unnoticed.
The focus of the story is Grace, a Southern girl who was given away as a small child, raised by people who were not her own blood, and knows nothing about her family. She’s been doing research with the help of a Genealogist. When the movie starts, we are told her Genealogist has a few promising leads and wants to meet with her.
One weekend, Grace’s boyfriend Jack invites Grace to take the big step of meeting his parents for the first time. Enroute they stay overnight at an old plantation which Grace’s researcher says is probably her ancestral home. When they arrive, the researcher is nowhere to be found. The beautiful old Southern plantation feels off in all sorts of ways. Before long, their overnight stay turns into a nightmarish cat-and-mouse chase, involving a cult, an apocalyptic prophecy about a forgotten god, and revelations about Grace’s unknown past.
Some critics of the film complain there is nothing new here. In a way, that’s true. This is a story all horror nerds have seen a million times. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, girl and boy go to secluded and remote location in the middle of nowhere, boy and girl struggle for their lives as bad people and/or spirits try to kill them.
However, I subscribe to the notion that all our stories are archetypal. There aren’t any stories we haven’t told a million times before. The success of our storytelling is in how we tell them and in what parts of our souls get tickled, disturbed, and constellated. In this regard, I think The Long Night is a lot more successful than many will give it credit for on first glance.
Beneath a simple exterior, there is a lot going on in this tale of folk horror and southern cults. Grace and Jack are the embodiment of a new couple who know lots about each other, but don’t quite appreciate that, even so, they are still largely strangers to one another. New couples exist in the dark space between the peace of knowing and the anxiety of what they don’t know.
On a somewhat larger scale, The Long Night also takes a look at how things from our family’s past might sneak up on us. These things can lay claim to us and own us. And yet, we don’t even know what they are, where they come from, or what responsibility (if any) we have for them.
On an even grander, more metaphysical level, this film also explores the fear we have of people whose belief systems we don’t understand. In fact, whose beliefs we cannot even begin to understand, even when we try. In a time when our world is often being disrupted by those who come from ideological and philosophical perspectives beyond our ken, exploring and coming to terms with this fear has become more relevant than ever.
It is easy to see in all this a deep dive into the ambivalent attitude we have towards the shift in religion over the last three or four generations. The Long Night gives air to a fear we seldom acknowledge in our modern world. In the largely secular, scientific–materialistic worldview most of us inhabit, what if, just suppose for a moment, the gods of old whom we have abandoned were real? That’s a terrifying enough thought. But the story goes deeper. What if they weren’t very nice? The most abandoned can be easily dismissed as cruel. After all, isn’t that why we left them? But what if the ones we tell ourselves are benevolent aren’t either? What is more, what if abandoning these old gods has kind of pissed them off? And - going further down the rabbit hole - what if leaving them in the care of the fringe elements of our society has been bad for everyone involved?
In a lot of ways, this film is incredibly bare-bones. Nearly all the action takes place in the southern manor house. The only exceptions are brief, establishing sequences in the couples apartment, their car ride to the plantation, and a pit stop at the local gas station for some expected archetypal foreshadowing action. (As Joss Whedon told us in The Cabin in the Woods (2011), all sacrificial offerings are required to encounter “the harbinger” first. Otherwise, it just isn’t being done right.)
The minimalism requires the actors to bring forth a lot of the tension and storytelling out of shear skill. They do this pretty admirably. Scout Taylor-Compton carries a lot of the weight in The Long Night as Grace. Most horror fans will remember as Laurie Strode in Rob Zombie’s 2007 and 2009 remakes of Halloween. She manages just the right balance of “I have no idea what’s going on” and “deep in my heart, I think I know exactly what this is all about”. Her boyfriend Jack is played by Nolan Gerard Funk, probably best known for portraying Hunter Clarington in the musical-comedy-drama television series Glee. Funk is a little outside of his comfort zone in a scary movie, but honestly I thought that ultimately worked to his advantage. He plays the boyfriend who tries to be supportive, but also doesn’t quite believe his girlfriend either. (I know, I know. My eyes just rolled a little too.) Jack and Grace are aided in their survival efforts by Wayne, well played by Jeff Fahey. Fahey is a favorite of mine. He’s one of those actors who is great in everything he does, but has never quite managed to get the right roles to become a household name. Many horror geeks will probably recognize him from Lost, Planet Terror, Machete, and a dozen other movies and tv shows. After Taylor-Compton though, I think it is Deborah Kara Unger that gives the real stand out performance here. Her role as antagonist requires her to convey a tremendous, ominous authority with very little dialogue. It’s not an easy trick, but she nails it. Fans of the dark and weird will remember Unger from The Game (1997), Thirteen (2003), and David Cronenberg’s deeply twisted Crash (1996).
The Long Night is well acted, well directed, deeply atmospheric, full of haunting archetypal imagery, and knows how to wiggle its way into the dark corners of our minds and souls. Some will find it a bit too slow moving. Others will be dismissive because they feel it is a bit “been there, done that”. However, for me, I saw a simple story which bucked it’s own simplicity and brought up deep issues about life and the world we inhabit. It was a great, if very disturbing, ride.
