'Never After Dark' review: Satisfying scares fuel this slow-burn ghost story

There's something sublime about a really good ghost story, and I'm pleased to say Never After Dark is a really good ghost story. 

From House of Ninjas' writer/director Dave Boyle comes a horror thriller that has the slow burn of '70s classics like The Shining and The Exorcist. Like those searing horror legends, Never After Dark also centers its story of supernatural infestation in one location. The forest-bound bed-and-breakfast of Never After Dark might seem an unremarkable space, much like the Overlook Hotel or the MacNeil home at first glance. But as the chilling story develops, its many-windowed exterior grows foreboding, and its wood-paneled interiors slyly sinister, suggesting the presence of something inhuman and dangerous. 

Within this familiar setting of a remote hotel rotten with dark secrets, Boyle sets loose a strange specter whose ragged breath can be heard on the phone when he's not stalking the halls, his face hanging with gore, its bottom half nothing but a bloody absence. However, in his protagonist, Boyle offers a curious twist, blending the haunted-house archetype of the eccentric medium (Poltergeist, Insidious) with the hard-nosed detective of film noir. 

Shōgun's Moeka Hoshi stars as Airi, a nomadic clairvoyant who travels Japan making a living by communing with the dead. Each new haunted home is a mystery to be solved. Once Airi knows what the ghost wants, she performs a special ritual involving a candle to pierce the veil between the living and dead, then leads the ghost to their great beyond. But from the start, something is off about this job. A shrewdly paced mystery with mounting horror and gore, Never After Dark is sensationally spooky and devilishly entertaining. 

Never After Dark is more than what it seems. 

Deep in the woods sits a long-abandoned hotel that's haunted by an unnerving specter. When Airi pulls up in her beater of a car, she's got with her everything she possesses, meaning baggage physical, emotional, and supernatural. As she is greeted by the hotel's chipper owner Teiko (Tae Kimura) and her openly skeptical son Gunji (House of Ninjas' Kento Kaku, who is also a producer on Never After Dark), neither addresses Airi's teen sister Miku (Kurumi Inagak), who sits in the backseat of Airi's car, her head swaddled in a yellow knitted cap. That's because this girl is a ghost, seen only by Airi and only in reflections. 

Don’t miss out on our latest stories: Add Mashable as a trusted news source in Google.

Working as a ghostbusting duo, their bond brings a levity to Never After Dark. Sure, in front of clients, Airi is professional, listening patiently to the story of a jawless ghoul creeping down the halls at midnight and noon. But when it's just Airi and her sister, there's the breezy energy of a slumber party. Theirs is an easy intimacy, spiked with playfulness as the teen pulls a poltergeist prank or Airi dances to a pop song through the haunted hotel. This subplot energizes the thriller, threading a liveliness in a tale of death, making it fun while frightening.

However, even with such joyful moments, Airi's suffering from mounting ennui. Her life has steadily become all about the dead. She has no home. Her best friend is her ghost sister, and it's hard to meet a potential beau when you're always off to your next seance. Even her hair reveals how this vocation is eating away at her. At a glance, she's a mild-mannered young woman in denim and sneakers who stands out only because of her asymmetrical haircut. Her black hair is long and lank on the left side, a choppy bob on the right. It is nearly chic, but noticeably a bit haphazard. Once we see the ritual, we understand. Communing with the other side demands a sacrifice of hair. So with each session, Airi surrenders a chunk of herself. In this visual clue of a messy haircut, Never After Dark asks what will happen when she's got nothing left? Perhaps no one is so aware as Airi that her time may be running out. 

Never After Dark is like an enchanting nightmare. 

Boyle rejects the temptation for jump scares, even when the opportunity for them is obvious. The antagonist ghost may appear abruptly, but never in a frantic attempt to frighten. He silently strides into rooms, or stands quiet in a corner staring hard, or clawing at a wall panel as if scratching for a secret door. These scenes of shrewd practical effects are all chilling because Boyle often frames them in wide shots, creating the sense that this is the ghost in its organic habitat. Dread blooms in this deceptively simple staging, because of how matter-of-fact the ghoul is placed in these spaces. It's Airi who is the outsider, not him. There's the sense that there's no escape from his menace. 

Bolstering the suspense, Boyle brews a soundtrack of plunking piano keys, whistling flutes, and a shuffling percussion that sounds like footsteps on stairs. A cool color palette leans into the eeriness, a constant reminder of flesh paled by decay.

Boyle fills his film with eerie elements that create an electric atmosphere, rich with paranormal possibilities. In this setting, Airi is the eye of the storm, surrounded by the big energies of the cheerful hotelier, a moody teen ghost, and a malicious spirit. She is our conduit to understanding them all, exuding patience, persistence, and pain. Yet as this mystery gets gnarlier, Hoshi capably plays frightened without losing Airi's edge. She is like the gumshoe, rattled but relentless in her mission to uncover the truth and do whatever good she can from there. 

This quest leads to a winding climax full of twists and violence, because this medium is no fragile flower. She'll fight with the same passion she brings to dancing, and the result is suffocatingly tense and satisfying. 

In the end, Never After Dark is a beguiling haunted house tale with tantalizing twists, skin-crawling scares, and a tender tale of sisterhood at its core. Horror lovers should be on the lookout for this one.

Never After Dark was reviewed out the 2026 SXSW Film Festival.