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Stream It or Skip It?

If you heard about a Winona Ryder-starring vehicle called The Cow when it premiered earlier this year at SXSW, moo-ve your thoughts and expectations over to the film’s new title: Gone in the Night. The film now joins Hulu, where it can blend in with the sea of sameness among tiles prominently leveraging the mugs of familiar actresses to elicit curiosity. Beyond the presence of Ryder and co-star Dermot Mulroney, what else entices about this film that toes a delicate line between mystery and thriller?

The Gist: Kath (Winona Ryder) and her younger boyfriend Max (John Gallagher Jr.) turn up at a remote cabin rental for a romantic getaway and find they are not alone. But it’s not as simple as a horror film where the other occupants — a sullen Al (Owen Teague) and his more free-wheeling partner Greta (Brianne Tju) — want to kill them. Their cohabitation is awkward and fraught, culminating in what Al claims is Max and Greta running off together. Grasping for some semblance of understanding on this development, she reaches out to the cabin owner Barlow (Dermot Mulroney) to get information on the pair that sabotaged her relationship. While the enigmatic schlub initially resists her outreach, Barlow soon becomes an eager partner in digging for more information on Al and Greta. Kath quickly finds out, however, that there’s an entire past of her disappeared darling she doesn’t know about while she tries to clear up her future.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I mean, if the gist does not instantly make you think about Barbarian … but in terms of quality, it’s closer to something like Dave Franco’s forgettable The Rental that came and went during the peak of COVID summer.

Performance Worth Watching: Look, it’s always fun to see Winona Ryder front and center in anything. She brings back memories of simpler times when Gen X was at the core of the cultural imagination. One just wishes she had a little more to do and play here, though.

Gone In The Night
© Vertical Entertainment /Courtesy Everett Collection

Memorable Dialogue: “Well, you’re not getting any younger,” a character who will go unidentified for spoiler reasons tells Ryder’s Kath near the film’s end. The line finally hits the sweet spot between sinister and silly that the film struggles to channel throughout.

Sex and Skin: While the two couples break the ice by playing a cheeky board game that gets a little randy, there’s nothing that moves beyond the gentle ribbing there.

Our Take: The narrative structure of Gone in the Night, clumsily inserting flashbacks throughout Kath’s search for the truth, makes the movie feel like an absolute jumble and a total chore. The film’s unmotivated jumps in time dull any hope of director Eli Horowitz developing momentum that could result in suspense or mystery. The characters are so thinly drawn by Horowitz and co-writer Matthew Derby that there’s little psychological heft that Ryder or Mulroney could bring to bear and enliven a listless, familiar mystery. By the time the big reveal happens, it’s more likely to elicit a defeated groan than a gasp.

Our Call: SKIP IT. This pseudo-genre fare can’t commit to much of anything and, as a result, becomes mostly nothing. Gone in the Night will be gone from your memory as soon as the credits hit. Only Ryder ride-or-dies need apply.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, Little White Lies and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.

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