Cinematography:
Šimon DvořáčekComposer:
Aid KidCast:
Simona Peková, Jiří Rendl, Annette Nesvadbová, Vladimír Kratina, Judit Pecháček, Jan Vondráček, Vasil Fridrich, Denisa Barešová, Michal KernPlots(1)
Jirka and Aneta are a young couple who enjoy the routine of their quiet relationship and are in no hurry to make big decisions in life. One night in their inherited flat, the doorbell rings and standing at the door is Jirka’s mother Valerie. An initially brief visit turns into a never-ending stay by an intense and caustic diva whose presence fundamentally disrupts the couple’s privacy. Certainties are shaken, boundaries broken. Although the film’s directorial duo works with a familiar premise, they subvert any dark humor with a sense of tension more commonly found in horror movies, all of it wrapped in the penetrating question: Is the mother’s unbearable smothering legitimate or are mothers sometimes the biggest monsters of all? (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)
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Reviews (10)
You know the feeling when you watch a film that’s really well set up, with good momentum, but the final resolution isn’t worth a damn? Yeah, that’s exactly how I felt after watching She Came at Night. The first half offered a gripping dialogue-driven experience that had your blood boiling. All supported by a brilliant performance from Simona Peková, who delivered it with real skill. But the ending. Ugh. Such potential wasted. What a shame. I give it a 5/10.
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The best Czech comedy of recent years, She Came at Night elevates the theme of warped family relations to a world-class level by associating itself with elements of more disturbing genres such as horror and the home-invasion thriller – a genre built on the oppressive premise that the intimacy of the main protagonists’ home will be disrupted by an intruder from the outside. In this case, that intruder is the inconsiderate, manipulative, touchy, self-pitying and emotionally extortionate, though also tragically lonely mother, who forces her way into the apartment that her son shares with his girlfriend. The filmmakers made the absolute most of a simple idea, modest resources and an intimate setting. The film is based on familiar and precisely observed dialogue and situations arising from familial cohabitation, whose unpleasantness rises to absurd levels. The narrative is systematically conceived so that every scene offers comedy and anxiety at the same time and can be interpreted metaphorically as a probe into the issue of failing intergenerational communication. The intertwining of these two tonally different moods, when eruptions of loud laughter frequently and regularly alternate with intense chills down the spine, works seamlessly and harmonically in She Came at Night.
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Hell is other people. And that’s all the more true in the case of your own family, because you can never escape from it, which is also due to the fact that you carry your family inside yourself forever. Jan Vejnar and Tomáš Pavlíček have made a brilliant home-invasion horror movie in which the terrifying (and suffocating) substance of familial relationships takes the place of the usual genre elements. The reactions in the cinema, filled with heavy, painful sighs, sheer terror and desperate laughter of those longing in vain for relief, provide confirmation of how the filmmakers brilliantly captured the details of psychological terror not only of the maternal variety, but also of the general variety extending one way across the chasm between the generations. Their film’s power lies in the devastatingly accurate casting, which fills out the screenplay based on internally observed and analysed feelings and their triggers, which are embedded in the screenplay with frightening precision and devastating authenticity, whether that involves lobotomising solicitude, crushing egocentricity or merely the exhausting, overly clever wisdom of the elderly. She Came at Night also excels in how it manages to acutely thematise the core of its genre, i.e. the home itself, from the perspective of its importance for the central characters, as well as with respect to how its violation impacts the characters. Of all the elements that the filmmaking duo put into their work, the most terrifying is the fact that they don’t demonise the central monster, but rather point out that each of us has the potential to become such a monster. The fact that the monster is not capable of self-reflection and, because of that, sees herself as a misunderstood victim gives She Came at Night an additional chillingly meaningful level that goes beyond the boundaries of the microcosm of one family, revealing an unsettling general truth about the core of numerous problems in society.
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A Czech unconventional black-humor home invasion. The film is strange in that the genre classification of horror is a misnomer, but what the main characters experience could be called horror, because it’s something you just wouldn’t like to go through. The star is Simona Pekova, she does a very good job. There is a kind of light psychological terror that carries through the whole film and to my surprise I quite enjoyed it. Fucking squaters! The finale could have been handled better, unfortunately no satisfaction comes in the end.
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Like The Owners, She Came at Night relies on a fairly mundane theme, but one that the makers take their own way and serve up an unusual humorous piece that gives you chills, all the more so because it can relate to many of us. The film stands above all on the phenomenal, playfully theatrical performance of Simona Peková, who almost steals the whole thing for herself, and surely many a viewer recognised in her the mother of her dearly beloved half – although it is true that the film is a lethal cocktail of the most toxic qualities cumulated in one person. I was a little puzzled by why I think it’s an unfinished ending. I must not forget to praise the distinctive score.
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