The rise of Airbnb and other such methods of securing fairly low-cost temporary accommodation has given rise to a number of genre thrillers that imagine what could happen were turning up for a weekend away to go as disastrously wrong as possible, with this year’s Gone in the Night following in the footsteps of The Rental, The Man from Toronto, and Barbarian to name but three.
First-time director and co-writer Eli Horowitz’s debut premiered at SXSW earlier this year before being shuffled off into the VOD wilderness, where it didn’t initially manage to gain much traction among audiences. However, that’s changed in a major way over the weekend, with FlixPatrol revealing that Gone in the Night has rocketed up the iTunes rankings to become the third most-watched feature in the United States, while it’s also sitting fifth on the Canadian charts.
That’s a decent return given that the critical reception has been somewhat tepid, with the atmospherically unsettling chamber piece holding a middling 48 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Praise be to Winona Ryder, then, who anchors the entire operation with another reliably strong performance, even if the story that surrounds her isn’t quite up to snuff.
Ryder’s Kath and her boyfriend arrive at their remote cabin for the weekend, only to find out that a younger couple are already there due to a double-booking mishap. Deciding to co-habit until the morning, things begin to go awry when Kath’s other half disappears with Brianne Tju’s Greta, sending her down a rabbit hole of mysterious circumstances, unanswered questions, and potentially dire consequences.
Published: Aug 8, 2022 03:17 am