Review: It Comes At Night

Image courtesy of A24.

Trey Edward Shults' "It Comes at Night" feels like a horror movie - and, for the sake of categorization, would likely be called one - just as his debut "Krisha" was a dysfunctional family drama that also felt nightmarish. The director has a knack for using relatively confined spaces - in "Krisha," a house hosting a family reunion and, in his latest, a house hosting two families during what appears to be the end of the world - to create significant tension. In other words, the guy has talent.

But similarly to his debut film, "It Comes at Night" is the type of picture I'd recommend because it is undoubtedly well-made, although it's a movie that inspires more admiration than enjoyment. I can appreciate the film's performances and minimalist use of space to create unease, while at the same time being slightly exhausted by its relentlessly bleak and grim tone.

The film is set in an undisclosed place during a time that could be the present or future. Joel Edgerton plays Paul, a former teacher who lives in a wooded home with his wife, Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and son, Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). As the picture opens, the family is executing Sarah's father, who has become ill and starts to look like one of the walking dead. We assume that some sort of disease has struck humankind and this family is living as isolated as possible in a home filled with gas masks, guns and boarded up windows.

One night, the trio are awakened by loud noises and discover that a man named Will (Christopher Abbott) has broken into the house to look for supplies. He tells Paul that he assumed the home was abandoned and was seeking food for his wife, Kim (Riley Keough) and young son, who are hiding out in a house down the road. To be safe, Paul ties Will up against a tree and leaves him there overnight. The next morning he questions him and agrees to help Will bring his family back to the house in exchange for some farm animals that Will claims to own.

After the two families are living under one roof, all is well - at least, for the moment. A fraught feeling remains throughout the story, but - for a time - the families coexist together peacefully. But another bump in the night that involves Paul's family dog - which may or may not be infected - leads to suspicions between the household members and, eventually, an untenable situation.

On the one hand, the cast does a solid job, despite the material itself being slightly thin. We know little about any of the characters, other than that Paul was once a teacher, Will a construction worker and that Travis might have a crush on Kim, who likes bread pudding, by the way. Regardless, the cast does a solid job of reacting to the tense situation in which the characters find themselves. On the other hand, Shults is probably smart for not providing much information as to why the couples find themselves in the predicament. In other words, there's no meaningless attempt to explain what has gone wrong out in the world.

Shults is impressive as a filmmaker for utilizing what appear to be low budgets - in both films that he has directed - and creating tense atmospheres. While I haven't loved either of his works, they are both well directed, acted and unsettling. So, while "It Comes at Night" isn't quite the horror masterpiece that some have proclaimed it, it's a better than average genre exercise that took some obvious skill to make.