A woman searching for her parents gets more than she bargained for in The Long Night. Having grown up in foster care with no idea where she's come from, Grace (Scout Taylor-Compton) gets a lead about where she can find her birth parents. Grace heads off with her boyfriend Jack (Nolan Gerard Funk) to an isolated southern plantation, however, they arrive to find it empty. Soon a death cult arrives and surrounds the house and Grace and Jack have to fight to ensure they survive the night.
The Long Night is a horror film that is directed by Rich Ragsdale. The film stars Scout Taylor-Compton (Rob Zombie's Halloween) as a young woman looking for her birth parents. Grace gets a lead from a man named Frank Caldwell (King Orba) and she travels with her boyfriend Jack to a completely deserted plantation. However, in the middle of the night, a masked death cult surrounds the property and it turns out that they need Grace in order to complete a ritual that will free the demon that they worship.
The Long Night is a film that is part home invasion thriller, while also having a supernatural element, due to the demonic nature of this cult. Taking place predominantly at the single location of the plantation, The Long Night is mostly about leads Scout Taylor-Compton and Nolan Gerard Funk trying to survive the invasion of mostly-anonymous cult members. However, a few familiar genre faces show up in the film. This includes Jeff Fahey (Grindhouse) as Wayne, the brother of the contact Grace was meeting, and Deborah Kara Unger (The Game) as The Master of the cult.
The story of The Long Night is told in seven chapters, which seem to correspond to the different stages of the plan by the cult to lure Grace to them, in order to finish their ritual, which is explained in detail at one point when Jack finds a book about the cult and is conveniently able to read the Latin it is written in. As a whole, the story of The Long Night is relatively straightforward, though the plot does take some weird detours, particularly when Grace has visions about the true nature of her parentage, which includes what is probably one of the most eye-rolling moments of the film.
There is ultimately not all that much that there is to take away from The Long Night. It's a fine horror film, for the most part, however, The Long Night doesn't leave much of a lasting impression by the time the credits roll.
