The Overnight (2022) - Drags a bit

'The Overnight' is about a young couple who go on vacation, but end up staying the night in an old hotel which turns out to be haunted... or full of ghosts, or demons, or something.

First of all one half of the couple (the woman) just isn't that likable.  Perhaps it's me being old and grumpy, but I can't stand the younger generation who are always on their phones taking selfies, so she rubbed me up the wrong way right from the start.  

Anyway, the hotel itself is nice.  From what I've read online it's not a set, but a genuinely run-down hotel which was used for filming purposes, so it fits the bill for a creepy environment.  But the whole thing just takes a while to get going.  At least forty-five minutes of the hour and a half runtime are just taken up with the couple bickering and experiencing events which are - only slightly - spooky.

Sure, the acting isn't too bad, but there isn't much here that's either creepy or gory - which doesn't bore too well for a film that's supposed to be 'horror.' The film looks okay from a technical point of view and at least it doesn't come across as cheap, just a little unfocused.  I couldn't really work out what the general threat was - it could have been ghosts, or possession, or suicidal entities seeking revenge.  Who knows?

Yeah, there's the obligatory 'fight for their lives' in the final act, but it's too little too late.  Plus as there's only two protagonists to begin with, you know that nothing much is going to happen to them until the absolute end.  There's just not enough here to particularly recommend.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back