Gone in the Night (Movie Review)

Screened as part of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival under its original title, "The Cow"

At face value when one sees a film with a premise such as the one attached to Eli Horowitz’s The Cow, with the cast that it boasts…one can’t help but ask, what could go wrong. Quite a bit, as it turns out. The Cow, for all the things it does right unfortunately doubles down on the things it’s doing wrong. And because of that, Horowitz’s debut elicits a phrase that everyone feared most as a kid, “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.”

Winona Ryder stars as Kath, a woman just trying to go through life with her new boyfriend, Max (John Gallagher Jr.), and have a weekend getaway at a cabin in the woods. Unfortunately for them, when they get there the cabin is already inhabited by a younger couple, Al (Owen Teague) and Greta (Brianne Tju). However, despite Al’s stoic insistence they go back from whence they came, Greta offers for them to stay till morning. The foursome sink deeper into awkwardness when Max finds an old board game aimed at couples to spice up their relationship that they proceed to play. Kath calls it an early night and in the morning she finds Al weeping in the woods claiming that Greta and Max hooked up and took off together. Max neither calls to explain or even offer any parting wisdom to what Kath could have done to sway his decision. Curiosity eventually gets the best of her as she contacts the owner of the cabin, Barlow (Dermot Mulroney), and teams with him to solve the mystery of what the hell actually happened that night.

The refreshing thing about The Cow is that it at least avoids the “is she crazy or not'' cliche with Kath. The way this story is told, we know pretty quickly that Kath is not crazy. She’s just a woman who is getting older, tired of playing games, wants a man that gives her the excitement of feeling young again but doesn’t want said man to also act like a child. Max, though, still has a bit of an immature streak about him and thus lies the crux of the tension between him and Kath. Once Max has disappears and Kath returns home to go back about her life but decides to do some more digging we then start to see flashbacks. Starting with an event in which Max’s immature nature and appearance clashes with Kath’s friends at a gathering that causes him to leave with the excuse of getting more booze. From here, revealing too much about the information we learn within this part of the timeline spoils certain aspects of putting the pieces of this mystery together.

Suffice to say, the weaving of present day Kath, and the events within the flashbacks as they start to catch back up to present day Kath are frustrating. They provide intriguing snippets of the story as a whole and successfully build the tension, but they’re often abrupt and cut sloppily back and forth. It’s almost like you’re drifting in and out of a dream, being pulled into one aspect but suddenly waking up and trying to recall what just happened before you’re back asleep and doing the same thing over again.

The tone of The Cow is not similar to the Amazon show Homecoming, which Horowitz created and wrote. There’s an uneasy quality about where this is headed and you’re just not sure what that destination is going to look like. Unfortunately, the mystery builds to something that tonally, just doesn’t feel like the logical or satisfying conclusion. There’s a horrifying reality to the implications of what’s happening, but the way the actors play it, feels silly. And there’s no sense in always playing the, well they should have gone this way in terms of criticizing it, cause it goes the way it goes…but it’s really hard to shake the “if they’d only WENT for it and done this instead” ideation.

The cast for 95% of this movie is absolutely great and keeping the sloppy storytelling afloat. However, the movie spends way too much time trying to be cute about how it's feeding information to the audience that eventually becomes tedious and obnoxious and when it's finally ready to tell you what's going on even the most horrifying explanation wouldn't be enough to keep most from feeling like...oh, that's it?

The Cow is a film that’s trying to pull one over on audiences by presenting a fractured timeline and events that are slowly weaving back and forth on a collision course to the truth. Unfortunately, in this case the truth is poorly conveyed, dull, and is likely to leave its audience in the pasture dazed and unsatisfied.