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The Night Visitor

The Night Visitor

Thriller · Mystery · Horror · 1971

An insane Swedish farmer escapes from an asylum to get revenge on his sister, her husband and others.

Movie details

The Night Visitor

“Locked in the cold asylum of his mind – a sane man stalks his prey...”

1971 Thriller · Mystery · Horror 1h 46m

Critical arithmetic

One number, for now.

TMDB

6.5 / 10

Community rating

An insane Swedish farmer escapes from an asylum to get revenge on his sister, her husband and others.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Night Visitor?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

Burnt Offerings

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Three friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures 24 hours into the future and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.

Night Watch

Night Watch

Mystery · 1973

A woman recovering from a nervous breakdown tries to convince her husband and and the local London police that she has witnessed a murder in the abandoned house next door.

Nightmare

Nightmare

Thriller · 1964

A young woman is plagued by nightmares of her asylum-patient mother. Upon returning to her family home, the nightmares become real when she sees a strange woman pacing the halls.

Ten Little Indians

Ten Little Indians

Crime · 1965

Ten strangers are invited as weekend guests to a remote mountain mansion. When the host doesn't show up, the guests start dying, one by one.

The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone

Thriller · 1983

Johnny Smith is a schoolteacher with his whole life ahead of him but, after leaving his fiancee's home one night, is involved in a car crash which leaves him in a coma for 5 years. When he wakes, he discovers he has an ability to see into the past, present and future life of anyone with whom he comes into physical contact.

Mermaid Down

Mermaid Down

Horror · 2019

A mermaid is ripped from the ocean by a fishing crew only to be tortured and to have her tail cut off. A seemingly helpful stranger intervenes, but then locks her away in an institution for mentally disturbed young women, where no one believes she is a mermaid. With no way out, she is forced to count on her survival instincts, and fight for her life at all costs.

Circle

Circle

Horror · 2015

In a massive, mysterious chamber, fifty strangers awaken to find themselves trapped with no memory of how they got there. Organized in an inward-facing circle and unable to move, they quickly learn that every two minutes, one of them must die…executed by a strange device in the center of the room.

Signs

Signs

Thriller · 2002

A family living on a farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields which suggests something more frightening to come.

Fear in the Night

Fear in the Night

Mystery · 1972

It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Peggy is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

László Benedek

Written by

Guy Elmes

Max von Sydow

Max von Sydow

Salem

Trevor Howard

Trevor Howard

Inspector

Liv Ullmann

Liv Ullmann

Ester Jenks

Per Oscarsson

Per Oscarsson

Dr. Anton Jenks

Rupert Davies

Rupert Davies

Mr. Clemens

Andrew Keir

Andrew Keir

Dr. Kemp

J

Jimmy Kennedy

Carl

Court is in session

Put The Night Visitor on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Arthouse Gremlin

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.