In this brooding tale of a renowned Parisian detective searching for a murderer in a country village where he intended to be vacationing, Joseph H. Lewis guys his oft-told tale of the hunter obsessed by his prey into some ingenious turns of psychology and perception--much of it done with mirrors. William K. Everson writes, "Lewis's unique ability to suggest a country or a milieu merely by adroit choice of location and skillful editing, art direction and camera angling...is here so successfully utilized that many assumed the film to have been shot on location in France. A complex psychological murder mystery, essentially a film noir, So Dark the Night is very probably Lewis's most personal film and certainly one of his best."