Night's End Review | Road Rash Reviews

4 star super cool modern supernatural thriller.

Night’s End is an American horror film, written by Brett Neveu (The Earl) and directed by Jennifer Reeder (V/H/S/94 (segment For “Holy Hell”), Knives and Skin).

It is a Shudder Original, available to stream on Shudder from 31st March 2022.

“There’s too much Ken Barber there. I just said Ken Barber’s Management Tips, so obviously I’m Ken Barber.”

Ken Barber (Geno Walker – Chicago Fire) is a very troubled individual. He lives alone in his new apartment, his windows covered over with newspaper, not daring to approach his front door. He spends his days engaged in his favourite pastime, making taxidermy birds and his new money making scheme, online self help videos. He struggles with anxiety, surviving by counting down from ten and dangling himself upside down. He also lives on a diet of coffee and Pepto, with everything in his home meticulously labelled up.

He maintains contact with the outside world via video link, talking to best friend Terry (Felonious Munk – For Life) as well as ex-wife Kelsey (Kate Arrington – The Irishman) and her new husband Isaac (Michael Shannon – Heart of Champions). It’s Terry who spots something strange in one of his videos, a taxidermy bird slides off the shelf behind him for no apparent reason.

He has a bright idea, maybe the apartment is haunted. They decide to investigate deaths in the building and to their surprise a young woman did die in his apartment after killing her father with an axe. Great. Between them, they create a “spirit jar”, using a combination between a link Terry found and a book Ken ordered from the Internet written by Colin Albertson (Lawrence Grimm – Captive State). What could possibly go wrong?

When it seems it hasn’t worked, and strange things begin to happen, he contacts author Colin for advice and in the mother of all cautionary tales against believing everyone you meet online, they set up a séance together.

“Capture it, draw it from the ether, I’m not a séance master. Don’t worry about that, I’ll send you the link, you figure it out.”

Night’s End is a very effective horror film which builds a sense of isolation right from the start. We feel for Ken as we watch him struggle with his environment and wonder how we would cope if the only place we found safe suddenly become threatening. Are these events real or the product of his anxiety and paranoia?

It’s very well written too and an interesting touch to measure his mental state using the coffee to Pepto ratio. It’s a film which is very much of it’s era, where connecting only via online methods was our only option, at the moment we can all relate.

It does feel like two films in a way, the start is brooding and claustrophobic and then the twist happens and suddenly boom, it’s a bit of an unexpected roller coaster of activity. I didn’t mind that at all and I found the whole thing very entertaining. Absolutely well worth a watch.

“Ghosts are like a thin veil drawn across our reality. So even if there were a ghost in your jar, which there isn’t, it couldn’t do a damn thing to you. Open the jar.”