Rent The Night Visitor (1971)

Chilly and atmospheric! - The Night Visitor review by NP

If you enjoy pacey, fast-moving horror stories, then I would suggest that ‘The Night Visitor’ will not entertain you in any way. I am fan of slow-burning chillers, and the crawling pace even made me wish the story would hurry up a little. There are times when watching this seems to last longer than the 105 minute running time.

But I’d advise you to stick with it.

It is a pleasure to see such legendary veteran faces as Trevor Howard, Rupert Davies, Andrew Keir, Gretchen Franklin and Max Von Sydow, and they don’t so much liven things up here as lend their weight to the grim surroundings and bleak locations, all beautifully filmed by Laslo Benedek.

There’s also a darkly playful twist at the end, which follows a series of other twists that will have you smiling wryly.

Per Oscarsson and Liv Ullman (as Anton and Ester Jenks respectively) also turn in wonderfully measured performances. Such fascinating characters are what carries the narrative here, and the film is as watchable as it is because of them. There is similarity to the works of Ingmar Bergman here, not least because two of his ‘muses’ are featured here. The attention to detail, the methodical story structure, and the stifling bleakness, are all representative of his style.

I ended up enjoying this very much. It is easy to become entranced by the frozen surroundings, the cold and unfriendly conditions, the austere buildings. If you allow yourself to fall under their spell, the leisurely pacing ceases to become a problem. My score would be a chilly 7 out of 10.