Very rarely does a film hold the distinction of being both incredibly dull and extremely confusing, but Brian Cavallaro’s Against the Night manages to secure this distinction with ease. Writer and director Cavallaro has produced a confusing mess of a film that’s packed full of one dimensional characters, empty scares and poor cinematography.
Seemingly inspired by an episode of Ghost Hunters, Against the Night follows a group of indistinguishable 20 year olds who, at the request of their amateur filmmaker friend Hank (Luke Persiani), decide to leave their house party to explore an abandoned mental asylum. All seems to be going to plan as they wander the asylum picking up footage for Hank’s ghost hunting series, when suddenly they start getting picked off one at a time by an unseen force.
Wait, Who Are You Again?
Although Against the Night is filled with issues, probably its biggest failing is its remarkable poor characters. Not a single character is the film is developed beyond the most basic of characteristics. This is especially true of the female characters, who are all interchangeable, aside from one of them being a lesbian and another being promiscuous. The male characters don’t fair much better, as they all look almost identical to one and other, which makes distinguishing them in high intensity scenes tough.
This poor characterisation is not helped by the almost universally terrible performances. The majority of the cast is made up of unknowns, aside from Frank Whaley who turns up as Detective Ramsey in two very short scenes. His performance is the textbook definition of phoning it in. He presumably read the script, saw that he could film it in a few hours and that he was going to be sitting down for the majority of it and said “yeah sure.”
Wait, What’s Going On?
As Against the Night starts out, its plot is fairly straight forward: a group of friends attempt to make a ghost hunting show and things go badly. But as the narrative progresses it gets more and more confusing, to the point where it just stops making sense and becomes almost farcical. At some point near the end of the first act it is revealed that perhaps it’s not a mysterious supernatural force that’s attempting to kill them; rather, a member of their own group. Although there is nothing inherently problematic with this, the issues arise when the film can’t seem to commit to its own twist. Instead, the film flip flops around with both explanations of the events, leading to intense confusion. When the explanation is eventually revealed to the audience, its only creates further bewilderment.
This confusion is not helped by the films disastrous cinematography. Throughout its narrative the film flips between standard photography and handheld camera footage. If this sounds incomprehensible to you, that’s because it is. The standard photography elements are passible at best, hindered especially by the awfully flat lighting. The handheld footage is just ugly to look at. It strongly evokes all those terrible ghost hunting television shows, and suffers immensely for it.
With the film rotating between the two, often in scenes with little light, it quickly becomes quite hard to tell what’s going on. Combine this with the interchangeable cast and the unintelligible plot, the film becomes a headache to decipher. Often times I found myself pausing the film in an attempt to try and figure out what was happening. It didn’t help.
Against the Night: Conclusion
Against the Night is in equal parts confused within its own narrative, and confusing to the audience. Its plot bumbles along, never quite sure of exactly where it wants to go or what it wants to achieve, all while bombarding us with infuriating camera work, tedious characters, and dreadful performances.
Perhaps Against the Night’s sole saving grace is that its only 85 minutes long. But each of those minutes feels like an eternity.
Have you seen Against the Night? What did you think?
Against the Night is now available to rent online on major streaming services.
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