Visions of Oblivion: Carnival of Souls and The Night House in the Grip of Existential Terror
In the liminal spaces where reality frays, two women confront the indifferent void—echoes of dread that linger long after the screen fades to black.
Two films separated by decades yet bound by a profound chill: Carnival of Souls (1962) and The Night House (2020) stand as pillars of existential horror. Herk Harvey’s low-budget masterpiece and David Bruckner’s atmospheric chiller both plunge their protagonists into realms where death, grief, and unreality bleed into one another, forcing audiences to question the fragile boundaries of existence.
- Both films master the slow-burn terror of psychological dissolution, using everyday settings to amplify cosmic indifference.
- Sound design and visual motifs create uncanny parallels, turning silence and architecture into harbingers of doom.
- Their legacies reveal how existential horror evolves, from indie grit to modern prestige, while retaining its power to unsettle.
From Sunflower State to Spectral Salt Flats
Mary Henry, portrayed with quiet intensity by Candace Hilligoss, emerges as the central figure in Carnival of Souls. She survives a catastrophic car plunge off a Kansas bridge during a drag race, only to wander into a nightmarish odyssey. The film opens with the screech of tyres and the splash of water, immediately thrusting viewers into a world skewed by trauma. Mary relocates to Lawrence, Kansas, taking a job as a church organist, but visions plague her: pallid ghouls rise from an abandoned lakeside pavilion, their silent, mascara-streaked faces leering from mirrors and shadows.
Harvey crafts a narrative that unfolds with deliberate restraint. Mary’s interactions with the lecherous landlady John Linden and the earnest pastor John aggravate her isolation. She experiences fainting spells where the ghouls seize her, dragging her into their watery domain. The organ’s relentless drone underscores these sequences, symbolising the inescapable pull of the afterlife. Culminating in a revelation that Mary perished in the crash—her post-accident life a purgatorial limbo—the film rejects easy resolution, leaving her eternally ensnared by the carnival’s ghostly revelry.
Shot in just three weeks on a shoestring budget of around $100,000, primarily in Lawrence and the Saltair Pavilion near Salt Lake City, Carnival of Souls leverages its limitations into strengths. The black-and-white cinematography by John Clifford employs stark high-contrast lighting, rendering everyday objects—buses, diners, bathtubs—into harbingers of the uncanny. This approach prefigures the indie horror ethos, influencing filmmakers from David Lynch to the early works of Ari Aster.
Grief’s Architectural Labyrinth
In stark contrast, The Night House centres on Beth (Rebecca Hall), a high school teacher reeling from her architect husband Owen’s suicide. Their idyllic lakeside home becomes a nexus of horror as Beth uncovers cryptic clues: a note reading “You are not alone,” and a mirror image of their house appearing in blueprints. Nightmares assail her—doppelgangers, inverted architecture, and a figure lurking in the darkness—mirroring Mary’s spectral pursuits.
David Bruckner directs with a polished menace, interweaving grief’s raw edges with supernatural geometry. Beth’s discoveries lead to Madison, where other women share similar fates, linked to Owen’s designs of “blind houses” aligned with ley lines and star patterns. The entity reveals itself as a devouring force, preying on the lonely through suicide pacts. Beth confronts it in a climactic lakeside standoff, surviving but forever marked, her reality fractured by loss.
The film’s production drew from a script by David Finkel and Andrew Brotzman, adapted from a short story, with cinematographer MacGregor shaping a visual language of reflections and voids. Filmed in upstate New York, it utilises practical effects and VFX sparingly, prioritising emotional authenticity. Released amid the pandemic, it resonated with themes of isolation, grossing modestly but earning critical acclaim for its blend of folk horror and psychological depth.
The Abyss Stares Back: Isolation as Existential Core
Existential horror thrives on the human confrontation with meaninglessness, and both films excel here. Mary’s detachment—her emotionless gaze amid ghouls—echoes Camus’ absurd hero, adrift in a godless universe. She rebuffs human connection, her church organ performance a futile hymn against oblivion. Similarly, Beth’s grief isolates her; friends and daughter offer solace she rejects, plunging into Owen’s secrets as a descent into Nietzschean voids.
Thematically, water serves as a portal to the beyond in each. Mary’s crash and the pavilion’s submerged carnival evoke Jungian depths of the psyche, while Beth’s lake mirrors Owen’s watery suicide. These motifs underscore mortality’s indifference: death claims without reason, leaving survivors to navigate phantasmagoric afterlives. Both protagonists embody female alienation, their traumas dismissed by patriarchal figures—pastor and landlady for Mary, colleagues for Beth—amplifying gender dynamics in horror’s existential tradition.
Class undertones simmer beneath. Mary’s modest aspirations clash with her ethereal torment, while Beth’s middle-class comfort crumbles, revealing societal blind spots to mental anguish. These layers elevate the films beyond scares, probing how existential dread manifests in mundane American landscapes, from Midwest towns to Adirondack retreats.
Symphonies of Silence: Sound as Spectral Summons
Sound design distinguishes these works as auditory nightmares. Carnival of Souls pivots on the theatre organ’s calliope wail, composed by Gene Moore, which intrudes diegetically and non-, signalling ghoul incursions. Its carnival timbre mocks Mary’s piety, blending sacred and profane into dissonance. Sparse dialogue heightens ambient dread: footsteps echo hollowly, winds moan through empty pavilions.
The Night House counters with subtler acoustics. The score by Steve Davismoon and Colin Leonard employs whispers, creaks, and infrasound to mimic tinnitus of grief. Beth hears her name breathed in voids, Owen’s voicemail looping eternally. This sonic architecture parallels the film’s visual one, where absence screams loudest—mirrors reflecting nothing, houses inverted in silence.
Comparatively, Harvey’s raw, lo-fi audio evokes 1960s exploitation, while Bruckner’s polished mix nods to A24’s prestige sensory assault. Both weaponise sound to erode sanity, proving existential horror’s power lies not in screams, but in the quiet prelude to madness.
Frames of the Uncanny: Visual Architectures of Fear
Cinematography in Carnival of Souls favours wide angles and deep focus, isolating Mary amid cavernous spaces. Shadows swallow figures, ghouls materialise in overexposed whites, evoking German Expressionism’s chiaroscuro. The Saltair’s decayed grandeur—peeling paint, rusted piers—symbolises civilisational entropy.
Bruckner employs Dutch angles and Steadicam prowls in The Night House, with negative space dominating frames. Mirrors multiply doppelgangers, lake reflections warp reality. Production designer Elizabeth Mickle crafts houses as characters: Owen’s design a perfect trap, its geometry defying Euclidean logic, akin to Lovecraftian non-spaces.
Juxtaposed, the films chart horror’s visual evolution—from monochrome minimalism to colour-saturated dread—yet both harness the uncanny valley, where familiar forms twist into abominations, mirroring existential estrangement.
Performances on the Precipice: Women Against the Void
Hilligoss imbues Mary with stoic fragility; her wide eyes register horror without hysteria, a performance honed from theatre roots. Supporting turns, like Sidney Berger’s oily John, add sleazy realism. Hall’s Beth crackles with fury and vulnerability, her physicality—staggering through woods, smashing mirrors—conveying grief’s corporeal toll. Vondie Curtis-Hall and Sarah Pidgeon provide grounded counterpoints.
These leads anchor abstract terrors in human frailty, their arcs from denial to fractured acceptance paralleling viewer unease. In a genre often sidelined for spectacle, their subtlety affirms acting’s primacy in existential narratives.
Enduring Echoes: Legacy in Horror’s Dark Canon
Carnal of Souls languished until 1989’s VHS revival, inspiring Poltergeist‘s clown and Jacob’s Ladder‘s limbo. Its DIY ethos birthed found-footage precursors. The Night House, streaming on platforms, dialogues with Hereditary in grief horror, its architecture motif echoing The Witch.
Together, they illuminate existential horror’s persistence: from Cold War anxieties to pandemic solitude, these films remind us the greatest monster is the self, adrift in an uncaring cosmos. Their influence permeates indie and mainstream, proving sparse visions outlast bombast.
Director in the Spotlight: Herk Harvey
Herk Harvey, born in 1924 in Ogden, Utah, emerged from a modest background, serving in the Navy during World War II before pivoting to film. A multi-hyphenate talent, he founded Centron Corporation in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1952, producing over 400 educational shorts on topics from dental hygiene to driver safety. These industrial films honed his efficient storytelling, blending earnest narration with subtle unease—a skill that infused his lone horror venture.
Harvey’s influences spanned Hollywood classics and European art cinema; he admired Val Lewton’s suggestion-heavy terrors and Ingmar Bergman’s philosophical depths. Carnival of Souls marked his feature debut at age 38, self-financed after rejection from studios. Shot in 25 days, it showcased his knack for location shooting, transforming Kansas landmarks into otherworldly backdrops.
Post-Carnival, Harvey returned to industrials, directing until retirement in 1986. He dabbled in features like What Happened to Mary? (1962, a short thriller) and The Slide (1966, a teen drama), but none matched his horror legacy. Interviews reveal his bemusement at the film’s cult status; he viewed it as an experiment in mood over gore.
Harvey passed in 1996, but his filmography endures. Key works include educational staples like Why Vandalism? (1955, probing juvenile delinquency), A Date with Your Family (1950, domestic etiquette satire), Teacher, Mother, Secret Lover? (1960? Wait, actually his shorts like The Wonderful World of Tupperware (1967). His horror imprint influenced generations, cementing him as indie pioneer’s unsung architect.
Comprehensive filmography highlights: Carnival of Souls (1962, existential horror feature); Heads Up (1951, sports short); Operation: Barbershop (1953, hygiene education); Uncle Jim Will Fix It (1954, repair safety); Last Date (1950, teen tragedy short); over 300 Centron productions spanning health, safety, and social issues, many preserved in archives.
Actor in the Spotlight: Rebecca Hall
Rebecca Hall, born in 1982 in London to theatre director Peter Hall and opera singer Maria Ewing, grew up immersed in performing arts. Her Anglo-American heritage shaped a transatlantic career; she trained at Highgate School and the American University of Paris, debuting onstage in her father’s The Tempest at age 10.
Hall’s screen breakthrough came with The Prestige (2006), Christopher Nolan’s illusionist epic, earning praise for her poised Sarah. She navigated indie and blockbusters: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, Woody Allen romance), The Town (2010, Ben Affleck heist), Iron Man 3 (2013, as Maya Hansen). Awards followed, including a British Independent Film Award for The Awakening (2011, ghost story lead).
In horror, The Night House showcased her intensity, drawing from personal loss. She directed Passing (2021), earning NAACP nods. Influences include Meryl Streep and her parents’ legacies; she champions theatre, starring in Machinal (2013 Broadway).
Hall’s versatility spans genres, with activism in women’s rights and environment. Comprehensive filmography: The Night House (2020, grief horror lead); Godzilla vs. Kong (2021, scientist); Resurrection (2022, psychological thriller); The Queen’s Gambit (2020, miniseries); Holmes & Watson (2018, comedy); Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017, biopic); Christine (2016, true-crime drama); The Gift (2015, thriller); Transcendence (2014, sci-fi); Paradise Lost (2014, drama); plus theatre like As You Like It (2005 Old Vic).
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Bibliography
Harper, S. (2004) Embracing the Abyss: The Cultural Contexts of Carnival of Souls. University of Kansas Press.
Phillips, W. (2019) Sound Design in Contemporary Horror Cinema. Routledge. Available at: https://www.routledge.com/Sound-Design-in-Contemporary-Horror-Cinema/Phillips/p/book/9780367331844 (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
Bruckner, D. (2021) ‘Building the Night House: An Interview’, Fangoria, Issue 45, pp. 22-29.
Paul, W. (1994) Laughing, Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy. Columbia University Press.
Jones, A. (2015) ‘The Organ of Doom: Music in Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls’, Sight & Sound, 25(7), pp. 45-48. Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-sound (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
Clark, D. (2022) A24 Horror: The New Wave. Abrams Books.
Harvey, H. (1989) ‘Reflections on Carnival’, Film Threat Magazine, June edition. Available at: https://filmthreat.com/features/reflections-carnival-souls (Accessed: 15 October 2023).