Gone In The Night

Upon arriving at a remote cabin for a getaway, a woman and her boyfriend discover another couple already staying there. They decide to share the rental for the night, but the boyfriend's disappearance sparks a race for answers.

Originally called The Cow (A name that technically makes sense after you’ve watched the film, but is still terrible name), Gone In The Night shares its foundation with the movie Barbarian, hinging off of society’s overwhelming xenophobia. Also, our fear of technology in general. Plus, our fear of how gross and creepy most Airbnbs are.

But it’s not nearly as good as Barbarian.

The core idea of the film is that Gen X is getting old, y’see… Or, perhaps more acurately, that we’ve been old for awhile now, and it sucks. The thing is, back in my day, I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry, it cost a nickel. In those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Give me 5 bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now… wait… where was I? Oh, yeah! Fear of anything new and strange is mostly just a twist on the classic “fear of the other,” and Gone In The Night is firmly rooted in that idea, but hand in hand with that idea is also a fear of irrelevancy, of getting old, of no longer being the center of it all, of being the Old Bitch At The Bar, right? It’s about looking around one day and wondering… What was it all for? Ultimately, this is a film about Entitlement and privelge, so fittingly, it centers on a white woman.

Gone In The Night is about a woman—played by the ever effervescent Winona Ryder, the original manic pixie dream girl—struggling with an unfulfilling life and an even more unfulfilling relationship, who finds herself and her boyfriend sharing a weekend getaway at an Airbnb in the woods with a younger couple who accidentally double-booked the same place.

Which is a always a Red Flag.

If you’re dumb enough to still be using Airbnbs, you should know two things for certain. 1. Pictures of your naked body are on the internet. 2. If someone shows up claiming to have also booked the place you’re staying, the only answer is: “Fuck off” and then shut and lock the door.

Anyway, the next day, Winona finds that her boyfriend has run off with the younger woman of the new couple, leaving her and the other boyfriend behind to pick up the pieces. Her inability to find the woman—so that she can cyberstalk her and her ex—leads her to the cabin’s owner, who is either Dermot Mulroney or Dylan McDermott, I can never tell, and much like how Winona is the Gen X fantasy woman, he is a kind of Gen X fantasy man… flanneled, bearded, taciturn, and sensitive, with curated tastes, whose deceptively simple cabin lifestyle is actually well-funded and comfortable. So while she does want to know what happened to her ex, who may not have actually run off, but was possibly kidnapped, she’s also drawn to Dermot/Dylan, and the two form a bond while attempting to solve the mystery of her missing ex.

The answer to which is… dumb.

Just a head’s up.

As a good Gen Xer, I believe in Winona Forever. So, I’m forgiving, but even then, the main problem with Gone In The Night is that it’s a bit too cold, the action and events a little too at-arm’s-length, and the use of flashbacks is honestly disorienting at first, and later on, just feel pretty lazy as far as the narrative is concerned. Worst of all, the ending feels like the start of a much, much more interesting movie.

Pass.