"It Comes At Night" Movie Review

By: James Southworth
Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

Horror movies always seem to have very polarizing responses from their audiences. You either love them or hate them, there is absolutely no in between. That is the case with this new suspense movie "It Comes At Night". If you look it up online, you'll see that the ratio of people who liked it to people who disliked it is nearly 50/50. This movie revolves around a family who is isolated in the wilderness in a post-apocalyptic world. Some sort of mysterious illness with no cure causes instant death to anyone who comes in contact with it. Paul (played by Joel Edgerton) wants to make sure he does everything to protect his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) from the dangerous outside world. But one night a man named Will comes knocking at this family's door asking desperately for them to help his family. Paul reluctantly agrees, and the other family comes into their house. This leads to distrust between the two families with the suspicion that one of them could be sick. Also, Travis continues to have disturbing visions about the house and the other family living in it.

There is a lot more to this film than your typical horror tropes, and that is exactly what I love about it. The thematic arcs of paranoia, distrust, and what constitutes good vs. evil run deep throughout. You can tell that Paul and Will both care about their families. There is not one character in here that is inherently evil, which is absolutely intriguing. The real evil seems to be the fear of the unknown. This disease (it's unknown what it really is, it could be some demonic presence or it could be an airborne virus) causes a sense of heightened paranoia, as neither family trusts the other. Travis's visions cleverly make the audience paranoid as well, as it makes it hard for us to distinguish between what is real and what isn't. We begin to question like Travis does: is it Will and his family that are the problem, or is Travis's own family the real threat? Director Trey Edward Shults does a great job at developing all six of the central characters, which is an amazing feat. We understand each and every one of them. We realize that both Paul and Will are fearful of the world around them, and because of that, they will do anything to keep their families safe. Sarah and Kim are both loving mothers who care deeply about their sons. Because of that it's hard to root for one side, and that is the point of the movie. It's more of a tragic exploration of how something unknown but horrifying can break people apart and reveal a more darker side that everyone tries to keep hidden. All of this makes for a movie that kept me intrigued and constantly asking questions. This film is utterly engaging just from a thematic standpoint.

Of course, the most important part of a horror movie is how it uses its style to make you scared. I think a part of the reason that audiences were so divided by this movie is that we often expect horror movies to be fast paced, with the scares being fairly consistent. That is not the case with this movie. Instead, there is a building feeling of dread throughout. There's an especially memorable scene where Travis thinks he hears something in the forest; perhaps it is the thing that causes the disease, and perhaps it isn't. We never see what this thing is that has Travis and the rest of his family so scared. But that is such a clever move on Shults's part. I had chills in so many parts of the movie because you just felt that this threat was dangerous due to the characters' reactions. Not showing the threat never gives the audience a feeling of release as to what it actually is, so they are effectively on edge for the whole movie. I haven't had a feeling of unstoppable and real fear like that since I watched "The Babadook" (That is my favorite horror movie as well as one of my favorite movies of all time, so know that is a significant compliment). The scenes of Travis's dreams- which seem like they have some truth to them- are highly frightening in the way that the camera keeps on getting closer to the Red Door, which is the ultimate source of paranoia as well as symbolism for fear of the unknown. It also helps this movie that we don't exactly know much about what this apocalyptic world has to offer. The family wears gas masks occasionally, there is no electricity, and there is some sort of threat that makes people die. That's all we know, and that makes for a frightening world with potentially undiscovered dangers. We realize that the main characters are never safe no matter what they try to do, and that only increases the dread.

As I said earlier, the characters in this movie are all great, and they are lifted even more by superb actors. Joel Edgerton is the easily identifiable highlight as Paul. I think that Edgerton is an incredibly underrated actor, and this film proves it. He never makes forcefully makes his performance outshine the other actors, but he still owns the screen every time he's there. He makes Paul subdued and likeable, and though there is a definite darkness in this character, I was still able to sympathize with him. We understand him fully; we get his motivations and no action that he does feels contradictory to his character. Kelvin Harrison Jr. does a great job as main character Travis. I enjoyed following this character, as we got to see him question everything that was going on around him. He always did a good job of embodying what the audience felt. He was really the heart of this movie, as he felt compassion for his own family and Will's family. There was just a purity to Travis that always felt genuine, like he was always trying to be good in a world that is very cruel. This movie is pretty dark, and it's fitting that the protagonist is the one that offers a semblance of hope. Because we love this character, it becomes hard to watch once we see that Travis is losing the parts of him that keep him human. Carmen Ejogo and Riley Keough both give respectively excellent work as Sarah and Kim, with both of them showing in touching and heartbreaking ways how much they love their children. Christopher Abbot is highly intriguing as Will, who I felt a little unsure of throughout the movie. It was interesting to see him getting developed and becoming more sympathetic as the film went on.

I can get why audiences were divided on this one. It's not your typical horror movie. There are no jump scares, it focuses on the characters' reactions rather than the horror itself, the answers aren't instant revealed, and the film has a slow burn feel. To me, all those things are positive. Shults doesn't underestimate the audiences' intelligence by giving them everything at once, instead naturally unfolding the plot. He makes our dread come out progressively rather than all at once. The characters in this movie are some of the most intriguing characters I've seen in any horror film, as they are all three-dimensional and sympathetic. In my opinion, "It Comes At Night" is a pitch perfect movie which goes beyond the cliches of horror. Instead, it gives us something which is plenty frightening but also has great characters and hard-hitting themes. I can't recommend it enough, as for me it's contender for best movie of the year.