Many successful horror films examine the darker depths of the human psyche through threatening symbolic manifestations. Through twisting corridors and a malevolent spirit,The Night Houseis a meditation on grief while delivering a visually stunning piece that keeps our nerves frayed. Using auniquely designed house to explore the throes of griefis a concept thatThe Night Houseshares with a BBC psychological thriller miniseries on Max,The Girl Before. Adapted from a novel of the same name byJ.P. Delaney,The Girl Beforeadopts a neo-noir approach and hosts a captivating cast to showcase two distinctive journeys of grief and healing that become inextricably intertwined. The series' scope travels beyondThe Night House’s personal journey as it also delves into the unity found in womanhood. If you’re after a moredeliberately-paced and delicately filmed version of the twisty horrorthat still offers the same haunting feeling,The Girl Beforeis absolutely a must-watch.
The Girl Before
A woman falls for an architect and gets an eerie premonition about his house, when she finds out that another woman died there.
What Is ‘The Girl Before’ About?
Operating on a dual timeline, the present day ofThe Girl Beforefollows Jane (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who moves into an ultra-minimalist house designed by the elusive architect Edward Monkford (David Oyelowo). After a mentally intensive and emotionally invasive questionnaire, she is selected as a resident of One Folgate Street, as long as she abides by the exacting minimalist rules of the house. These rules include prohibiting children, pets, decorations, books, and, most importantly, messiness, which are all enforced through regular inspections and the automated house-system that gathers information on the resident (but obviously “nothing that Google or Facebook don’t know”). The tenant isnot only signing up for a minimalist house but also a minimalist lifestyle.
We uncover more details about the residence alongside Jane, who discovers that the house has not been occupied for the last three years, taking us to the past-day timeline. Here, we follow Emma (Jessica Plummer) and her husband, Simon (Ben Hardy), a messier, party-going couple that somehow meets Edward’s criteria as tenants of the house. The only things Jane and Emma have in common aretheir eerily similar looks and their traumatic past, enduring the grief of giving birth to a stillborn child and a sexual assault during a burglary, respectively.
Through Jane’s more inquisitive nature, we learn that Edward had not lived there himself due to his wife and son being crushed by a collapsing wall during the house’s construction — a wife that also shared similar features to the two women. As each timeline progresses, the minimalist house acts as a medium between the two women, astheir fates intertwinedespite their distinctive journeys. Although they never meet, due to Emma’s untimely demise, Jane steps into the role of an amateur sleuth to give Emma justice while healing both Emma’s and her own trauma.
‘The Night House’ and ‘The Girl Before’ Showcase Unique Settings
The Night Houseuses confusing architecture, a secondary mirror image house, and optical illusions using pillars and cornices to convey Beth’s (Rebecca Hall) bewildering investigation into her husband while also thematically illustrating the emotional turmoil of losing a loved one. The features of the house and her husband’s scrawlings on the blueprints are largely reminiscent of the story behind thereal Winchester Mystery house. It was theorized thatSarah Winchesterdesigned a house that contained doors that opened to walls or immense drops, stairs that led to the ceiling, and narrow twisting corridors, in order to distract the spirits that were tormenting her, just as Beth’s husband seemed to.The Girl Beforetakes a drastically different approach to emphasize the tumult of grief, essentially contrasting it to a stripped-bare, open-floor-plan home with little to no room to hide away from your own thoughts.
This stark contrast between the minimalist architecture of the house and the tempestuous nature of grief that pervaded the residents also lends to the social experiment Edward was seemingly conducting. Through his stringent screening process, he manages to pick two tenants who are still navigatinglife in the wake of trauma. As such, it is almost as if he is investigating whether aminimalist lifestyle could “de-clutter” the mind of a grieving person. Having experienced trauma himself, through the death of his wife and son, he is personally invested in this unique experiment, explaining the almost scientific approach he takes to the tenants: interviews, controlling variables, frequent observation, and constant feedback.
Unlike the house inThe Night House,The Girl Before’s minimalist home is cold and calculating and even edges towardsBlack Mirrorterritory. With bare concrete walls, soaring windows, and slabbed stairs with no railing (which is always a bad idea, as confirmed later on), the house evokes connotations of a cage home to a lab rat, or a criminal in an interrogation room. As such, thisamplifies the residents' trauma as it echoes through the unforgiving space,yet, is also ironically healed indirectly by the house.
‘The Night House’ and ‘The Girl Before’ Love Men With Red Flags
As events unfold throughout bothThe Night HouseandThe Girl Before, red flags and red herrings are compiled on top of one another in a way that is oddly not frustrating. Both Owen (Evan Jonigkeit), Beth’s late husband, and Edward areprimed to be revealed as antagonists of the show, yet are not. Beth discovers that Owen had partaken in the extracurricular activity of stalking and murdering women who shared physical similarities to her and brutally jamming them under the floorboards of the mirror-image house. This had started with strange images on his phone that subtly hinted at him cheating on her, then an entire folder filled with images and later, disturbing witness accounts of his actions until he was exposed.
Similarly, Edward harbors closely guarded secrets and is subtly painted as malevolent. Starting strong with his insanely particular expectations of how his tenants would live, Edward immediately seemed off. This is compounded by his overly professional and direct personality, especially as he asks out both Emma and Jane, as if engaging in a business deal. The creepiness is topped off by his very specific type in women, a trait that he seems to share with Owen. It is also noteworthy that two of the three women he dates are now dead. Between his constant presence and obsessive behavior, it seems inconceivable that the antagonist isn’t him.But sometimes, an obsessive, stalker-like man is just that, and not a killer. Edward’s character may be a red herring, but there is somethingcompelling in Oyelowo’s actingthat makes the red flags a deliciously fun watch to roll your eyes to.
‘The Girl Before’ Expands Its Scope To Womanhood
While both pieces explore themes of life after trauma,The Night Housefocuses on Beth’s personal journey, whereasThe Girl Beforewidens its context to womanhood in the resolution. As mentioned before, the cold minimalist house magnifies their grief, yet they can heal through their connection to each other via the soulless house itself. Given that Emma’s healing is really done posthumously, and arguably isn’t really considered “healing,” she is finally getting the justice she deserves. Later in the miniseries, we discover that Emma had been sexually assaulted, just not during the burglary or by the burglar, causing the entire case to be thrown out. However, the officer in charge had neglected to properly do his homework and act with sensitivity around the subject. He had been trying to convict the burglar for years and, as such, Emma’s accusation under pressure became the golden ticket he needed. So when the truth was exposed, instead of acting with sensitivity or empathy, he threw her away.
The lack of humanity around how Emma is treated, coupled with Plummer’s poignant acting where she perfects the balance of grief and shame women tend to experience after sexual assault,reflects how the justice system often fails women. Similarly, Jane finds out about the gross misconduct by hospital staff during her hospital care when she was pregnant with her stillborn child. Even after being called out, they remain steadfast and ignore the emotional toll their decisions have taken on Jane. Bothwomen are failed by the menin their lives. From men in uniform to their trusted lovers, these two women are constantly stifled by inappropriate behavior or even violence.
As such, Jane’s determination to investigate and finally find out the circumstances around Emma’s death leads to a sense of comradeship between them. Through this journey, Jane is also able to work through her own trauma and can heal in the final moments. By widening the scope of the series from a personal journey of grief tothe collective female experience,The Girl Beforeoffers an ending that is simple yet provoking. BothThe Night HouseandThe Girl Beforeare uniquely powerful meditations on grief, but if you love the delicacy and thoughtfulness of the neo-noir genre and crave the empowerment of womanhood, the miniseries is worth a watch.
The Girl Beforeis available to stream now on Max in the U.S.
