Curtis Harrington's first feature captures the Val Lewton spirit, creating horror not on the screen but in the mind of the viewer, and evoking a world of legend, poetry and the occult that inserts itself into everyday reality (as it does in Lewton/Tourneur's Cat People). British critic Raymond Durgnat is among many critics who finds Night Tide an impressive first feature. He writes (in Films and Filming): “(Harrington) has taken as his inspiration (or at least as his epilogue) the last stanza of Poe's ‘Annabel Lee': ‘And so all the night-tide I lay down by my side/ Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,/ In the sepulchre there by the sea--/ In the tomb by the sounding sea.'
“It's brought up to date into terms of a young sailor on liberty who falls in love with an orphan girl posing as a mermaid in a California seafront show. Because of the way her adoptive father has played on her childhood fears, her unconscious mind thinks that she's a changeling, and she attempts to murder her lover. But maybe she is a changeling....
“Night Tide has an impeccable professional gloss and control of style.... The glossy highlights of the night scenes are a joy to see. Space and shadow are used with splendid precision. In the same way, the film counterpoints its supernatural undertones with the freshly matter-of-fact tone of the everyday. It implies the uncanny in terms of open-air breakfasts overlooking sunlit beaches.... The story can be explained rationally or otherwise, according to one's choice....”