You can check out, but you can never leave. IFC Midnight has released the first trailer for director Kourosh Ahari’s horror debut, The Night, about a couple forced to confront their secrets while trapped in a haunted hotel.
The Night stars Shahab Hosseini (star of A Separation, Iran’s first Best Foreign Language Film winner) and Niousha Jafarian as Babak and Neda, an Iranian couple in America who come across a strange hotel while searching for a place to stay with their one-year-old daughter. Hotel Normandie turns out to be a place of Kubrickian nightmares, as Babak and Neda are tormented by loud noises, a mysterious hotel manager, and the fact that they’re trapped inside with no escape. Here’s the trailer, first revealed by Entertainment Weekly.
[referenced id=”1525034″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/10/his-house-puts-a-fresh-coat-of-terror-on-the-haunting-genre/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/31/c21a8s8dlt2pwevcq2t0-scaled-e1604264733797-300×156.jpg” title=”His House Puts a Fresh Coat of Terror on the Haunting Genre” excerpt=”After barely escaping the horrors of war in South Sudan, Rial (Lovecraft Country’s Wunmi Mosaku) and Bol (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) Majul have made it all the way to London and into their first home. But their apparent good fortune has a terrifying downside, as Remi Weekes’ chilling His House soon reveals.”]
Their seemingly endless night inside the Hotel Normandie isn’t without purpose, as some dark, malevolent force seems to be pushing Babak and Neda to expose the dark secrets they’ve been keeping from each other. Will they make it out with their family intact, or is this hotel stop a one-way trip?
The Night is set to come out on streaming on January 30. It also made history last year as the first U.S.-produced film to receive a licence for theatrical release in Iran.