[3] The film was "suggested by" the 1940 three act play The Peaceful Inn by Denis Ogden set in Dartmoor that made no mention of the war.

[5] BFI Screenonline writes, "The high-quality personnel involved and the tight, professional scripting mark the film out as one of the earliest templates of what would become the traditional Ealing style.

In a Welsh port, merchant captain Harry Meadows and his wife Alice quarrel about their deceased son, a victim of a U-boat attack.

During it, he deliberately turns on the radio, to a programme where serving members of the armed forces send vocal messages to family back home, and for a few seconds Alice thinks it's her son.

Richard French's paramount concern for his wife and Joanna's safety reunites them, while both Fortescue and Oakley repent their criminal ways.

The film premiered in London at the Regal, Marble Arch on 14 April 1944,[1] and The Times reviewer wrote: "The film elusively obtains its effects when it appears to be least striving after them, and an occasional frisson is achieved by acute touches of direction which light up not only depths of human tension and unhappiness, but also unobtrusively reckon with their cause—the war.

"[7] George Perry wrote in Forever Ealing (1981), "No matter how well-acted, the fantasy is hard to sustain and never develops beyond a theatrical morality tale.

"[8] The Huffington Post reviewer disagreed, writing "I really can't recommend The Halfway House enough: unlike the more overt Ealing war films (which this resembles in many ways, not least the disparate group coming together and working together), this is subtler propaganda, and its overarching supernatural atmosphere is well done.