Written and directed by Ted Dontchev and Maximilian Feurstein, after a botched heist three thieves break into a house to hide. When they discover a family inside, one wants to kill them, one has an eye for the daughter, one tries to get everyone through the night. Starring: Wayne Reid, Tim Cullingworth-Hudson, Liv Paige, Sabrina Bale, Olly Bassi, Claudia Barba, Tyler Winchcombe, Michael McKell, Sandy Button, Nathaniel Francis and Dez Skinn.
Choosing such a confined, tense environment to set a film in comes with advantages and disadvantages. There’s the opportunity to keep things budget friendly, which is a help to any independent filmmaker, but it also adds a huge responsibility to create a genuine, consistent tension. It means that you have to hit that one key note to make everything work and unfortunately, Thieves in the Night doesn’t quite achieve that.
There’s plenty of conflict and aggression, they’re hitting that classic bad guy note really hard, even too hard at times. The foundation of the story is there, they’re trapped and things escalate gradually but it’s missing a bigger level of detail and a weight to its atmosphere. The challenges that arise tend to be the same ones repeating themselves rather than taking things in different directions. The language is very heavy-handed, and the use of misogyny becomes quite tiresome by the end.
The visual also has its struggles, particularly when it comes to the colour and clarity of the aesthetic. It’s leaning heavily on contrast and feels like it needed better lighting but it’s going for a darkened tone which weakens the visual. The music choices similarly nudge things in the wrong direction, not always matching the tone of the scene they’re paired with. It has a certain surface level feel, it’s not breaking any deeper which is stopping it from building a connection with these characters and adding a genuine sense of fear or danger.
Without those other levels, there isn’t a great amount for the actors to play with, for the most part it’s quite a simple back and forth, mostly hurling insults. The key exception to that is Olly Bassi’s Ben who sincerely tries to play mind games and delivers his threats with a convincing tone. He embodies what Thieves in the Night needed more of, a subtler hand and playing a psychological game rather than simply a physical one.
Thieves in the Night had the right idea but fell too simple in its execution. It misses out on throwing in some bigger twists and turns for its characters to face, as well as having a few potholes to contend with. The language is trying too hard to push that feel of aggression and threat, when it’s already been established. There also isn’t really enough time to get to know these characters, to truly give you something to root for. It wants to set up a game of survival and battle of the wills, but it feels like it spends most of its time simply hurling insults.
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