Gone in the Night Review: A Wily Mystery That Turns Time Into a Boogeyman

Eli Horowitz’s Gone in the Night begins with lovebirds Kath (Winona Ryder) and Max (John Gallagher Jr.) driving to and arriving at a cabin in the woods, setting up the expectation of a dark night of the soul. But the film doesn’t entirely tread familiar thriller terrain. After the pair are surprised to find a younger couple, Al (Owen Teague) and Greta (Brianne Tju), already at the cabin, and the latter eventually runs away with Max, the film becomes in part a relatively routine mystery about Kath attempting to track Max down.

Throughout, Horowitz and Matthew Derby’s screenplay stresses the dissonance between generations, and as such Gone in the Night is also a portrait of people grappling with the inevitable consequence of getting older. This emphasis is most prominently felt in the awkward interactions between the characters, which are mostly composed of—intentional and not—slights against their respective ages. Kath, for one, is usually on the receiving end of passive-aggressive digs, including fielding judgmental looks and comments over her relationship with the younger Max. But while these ageist insults are initially played for humorous effect, the accumulation of them serves to compound Kath’s insecurities.

In the end, the film’s ominous atmosphere derives less from the mystery of Max’s disappearance and more from the scary business of getting older. Ryder imbues a sense of her character’s discomfort into her performance, such as tensing up whenever Kath is in the company of younger characters. Conversely, she becomes much more relaxed when she’s around Nicholas (Dermot Mulroney), the ex-scientist and middle-aged owner of the cabin who helps Kath to look for Max and divulges his own mortality issues along the way.

These thematic concerns sustain our interest through much of Gone in the Night, as the mystery of Max’s disappearance is far from suspenseful. That lack can be traced back to the narrative architecture, beginning with a series of early flashbacks that individually show Al, Greta, and even Max engaged in dubious activities prior to their arrival at the cabin, all of which remove the element of surprise from the film long before the big reveal.

Consequently, the true nature of Max’s disappearance lands with a resounding thud. Yet, in this same sequence, the filmmakers manage to articulate one other revelation that’s nonetheless striking. As the characters’ fears of getting older reach levels of tragic desperation, the film’s ultimate villain is exposed as never having been a mere person, but something more frightening because it’s truly unstoppable: time itself.