It Comes at Night has the title of a horror film and, at times, the mood of one, but it is far too restrained to get the juices of the genre crowd going.
That’s not an accident or a mistake, however. More likely, it’s a cheeky riff on the leaden, generic titles of so many jump-scare films before it. The It in writer and director Trey Edward Shults’s It Comes at Night might be the deadly disease that’s turned an isolated family into ruthless survivalists or the actual intruder that upends their lives; but it could just as well be the crippling and overwhelming power of doubt and paranoia. If that’s any indication, it shouldn’t be a surprise then that It Comes at Night is a psychological thriller that is more likely to haunt than scare.
That’s not to say there aren’t some moments that might make you yelp. Shults, in only his second feature following his splashy debut with the family psychodrama Krisha, stylishly and effectively builds tension and mystery in this stripped-down experiment that crescendos occasionally into the stuff of nightmares.
It’s centered on one family, Paul (Joel Edgerton), Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), their teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and their dog Stanley. They live in a big house deep in the woods and entirely alone. There’s some sort of disease going around in the world outside of their protected fortress, and it’s turned people crazy and desperate. The disease itself, which hits quickly and is highly contagious, is barely explained. It’s also possible that it’s scarcely understood by these people. Nevertheless, they’ve decided that strict isolationism is the only means for survival.