The Long Night

"The Coven" or also known as "The Long Night" is a movie with a predictable and sometimes silly script, but it has a couple of interesting moments within its cult and satanism theme. The great achievement of the film is its cinematography which is atmospheric and offers some gloomy and other very beautiful visuals, making the most of its filming locations. The performances of Scout Taylor-Compton, Nolan Gerard Funk and Jeff Fahey are decent without being outstanding. The soundtrack is an interesting point, sometimes it is good but in some scenes it does not fit with the image that is shown, resulting out of place. A soulless and boring movie at times, but not as bad as its reputation says.

Wasn't the best movie I've ever seen and definitely not the worst, Kept my attention throughout. Don't understand the horrible ratings. To each their own.

Knew this was going to be bad as soon as they showed the painfully long silent car ride where they superimposed shots over the top of each other for no reason whatsoever. Reminded me of the unnecessarily long transition scenes in Birdemic that served no purpose whatsoever.

Gave it two stars for a good title cover.

This fell like a throwback to the Satanic Cult movies of the 70s. Some good creepy scenes and some awesome costumes, twists and turns. Awesome spooky fun.

I pretty much agree with 'Wormsoftheerth's review. He/She hit it right on, so I'll point you to that review for more details.

I will say that with the genuinely powerful visuals and soundtrack, at the beginning I was really hoping for a lot here, but as others have said, there just simply was not enough 'Story', and I honestly feel that they really lost any focus at all by the last 30 minutes. I think the IDEA itself is fine, although it has certainly been done many times before, but especially when you start a movie off this strongly, you absolutely HAVE to be able to ratchet up the tension as you go along, building to an effective ending, and unfortunately that just does not happen here.

I will say that the director is most definitely very strongly influenced by Stanley Kubrick, no doubt about it, even right down to the scene titles. Long, epic panning camera movements. Long, moody shots. Even some of the Space/Embryo imagery towards the end. Again, TONS of atmosphere which I really like and I feel is one of the most important elements in a good Horror film. But, you HAVE to build to something, and this just kind of whimpers out. Be sure to check out the review I mention above because I very much agree with pretty much all of this person's observations.

I think that if the filmmakers had just spent as much time on an effective development of the actual story as they did on the look, mood, and atmosphere, they really would have had something here. And, it is always great to see the excellent Jeff Fahey! Although I would guess that it probably didn't take much more than a day to shoot his scenes.

So, ultimately, especially after about the first hour, pretty disappointing. I gave it a '5' which was higher than the current 3.x that ones have rated it. Mainly giving a little extra credit for the fantastic look, sound, and feel of the movie. I would suggest that if you happen to like really atmospheric, moody Folk/Horror movies, just watch the first half, and when it begins to falter, go do something else 😁