Night Book is an interactive horror film that puts the fates of its characters in the viewer’s hands.
Loralyn (Julie Dray) is a translator working the night shift remotely from her home, live interpreting video calls from English to French, and vice versa. Currently pregnant, with her husband working far away on a development project, and left to care for her mentally ill father, Loralyn already has a lot on her plate. But things only get worse when she is tricked into reading an ancient book that summons a demon into her home.
Due to its very nature, the plot to Night Book will change depending on the choices you make as a viewer. Wales Interactive put significant effort into ensuring that this aspect of Night Book was extensive, offering seemingly endless possible outcomes. While that does make it more difficult to judge the quality of the narrative overall, it is commendable that the decisions don’t feel forced.
The continuous threads between the stories are entertaining and engaging. Each viewing and each different path taken allows for the audience to construct the bigger picture in which Night Book is set. This encourages you to keep going, keep replaying different choices, and unwrap the whole story.
The acting is a positive throughout. Julie Dray plays the lead role very well, growing increasingly terrified and determined in equal measure. Her father Dan (Mark Wingett) is also well acted, and his performance adds significant tension to an already stressful story.
The set design is small and cramped, amplifying the feelings of terror and claustrophobia and trapping the viewer just as it does the characters. Night Book also borrows elements of the screenlife genre (first popularised by Searching), using desktop, camera feeds, or other apps to propel the action.
An argument can be made that Night Book is less a film than it is a game, due to the number of possible endings and emphasis on the viewer’s power. However, the focus remains on the narrative and the characters in a way that balances ‘game play’ and ‘feature film’ incredibly well.
If you are someone who enjoys interactivity when consuming media, if you like the idea of unravelling a story and discovering new possible outcomes, and if you enjoyed reading ‘choose your own adventure’ books as a kid, then without a doubt, Night Book is the film for you.
Night Book is released July 27th on Steam (PC & Mac), PS4, Xbox One, Switch and iOS.