Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.
The Night of the Hunter is one of cinema's most visually audacious and singular achievements — Charles Laughton's only directorial effort stands as a genuine outlier in American film history. Robert Mitchum's Harry Powell is one of cinema's great villains, and Lillian Gish anchors the final act with immense authority. The expressionist cinematography by Stanley Cortez (the underwater shot, the children's river journey) is breathtakingly original, earning a genuine 4. The southern gothic atmosphere and fairy-tale nightmare tone are utterly distinctive — this film belongs to no one else. The plot, drawn from Davis Grubb's novel, is mythically lean and effective. The ending, while thematically rich with Gish's maternal defiance, slightly deflates the tension built so masterfully in the middle stretch, making it the one category held back from the top mark.