That Night: An Expectant House and Its Chilling Emptiness

Joseph McDonagh’s 13-minute That Night is a horror film that thrives on dread. Its preoccupation with dread itself frees it from providing a neatly packaged source. Instead, it develops an atmosphere of anticipation.

Rosie (Rianne Britten) and Theo (Ben Dalton) are about to have a daughter. There should be little reason for there to be apprehension on the very day they get the news, yet the sound design does not make room for plain happiness. Despite the couple’s casual banter and clear affection, the mood of the film overwhelms it, like colour losing itself in water. The camerawork frames them from outside the door, its barred, untethered eye making you uncomfortably aware that, regardless of the actual size of the house, all of it is otherwise empty. Indeed, even the overhead lighting on the dining table where the couple is eating seems to enforce the notion of isolation.

Why, the film keeps having you wonder, do they seem so oddly gloomy? Why do they seem small, lonely and cold? It is here, at a table that seems to draw attention to its bareness, that Rosie begins a tale about her childhood and her parents. Excavated from her aunt and far from happy, it sets the stage for the climax. Britten, as the rootless orphan trying to have the ideal family for herself, delivers a vulnerable performance and so much the better; she is the terribly lonely fulcrum about which the film turns.

The climax is chilling for all its absences—and there are many, each heaping upon the other into a nameless monstrosity that Rosie has known her whole life even if she is only now come face to face with it. The house is emptier than ever.

Watch That Night Horror Short Film Trailer