‘Night’ time is the fright time
“My family is all that matters to me.” That’s the refrain of Paul (Joel Edgerton), holed up in a house in the woods with his wife, Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and teenage son, Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), in the wake of a pandemic.
Here’s what we don’t know: Almost everything else. And this is what makes “It Comes at Night” as claustrophobic as the view from inside one of the family’s omnipresent gas masks.
Other than an opening scene depicting the death of Sarah’s father, Bud (David Pendleton), from the disease, we have little information about what kind of narrative we’re even dealing with: Is this a real-world scenario? Or are zombies about? Certainly there’s something that keeps Travis waking up in cold sweats. A cutaway to “The Triumph of Death,” a nightmarish 16thcentury painting depicting masses of people being preyed on by skeletons, hints at the disaster’s scope.
But it only takes three additional humans to tip off a meltdown. Will (Christopher Abbott) shows up begging for help for his family (his wife’s played by Riley Keough), and the wary relationship between the two small tribes quickly grows strained.
Director Trey Edward Shults made his debut last year with the indie drama “Krisha,” and this one’s a very different take on family dynamics — not at all your typical horror film. It’s also the second notable feature this year to center on the creeping terror of a young black man (after “Get Out”), which is just one of the ways it’s a savvy riff on our current cultural anxieties.
Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (violence, profanity). Now playing.