‘It Comes at Night’ comes with relentless tension and scary human failings
Abandon all hope those who enter a showing of It Comes at Night, a well-crafted, albeit entirely bleak exploration of paranoia and fear.
With this pitchblack psychological thriller ( out of four; rated R; in theaters nationwide Friday), writer/director Trey Edward Shults ( Krisha) creates a relentlessly tense atmosphere around a family of survivalists who hunker down in the woods, weighing isolationism vs. civil kindness and continually worrying about what lies beyond their boarded-up house.
The disturbing existential question underneath it all: What if the “monster,” the It, isn’t on its way but has been there the whole time?
A strict father with no shortage of rules for doomsday, Paul (Joel Edgerton) goes to extreme lengths to keep his wife, Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and teenage son, Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), safe. He’s especially on edge having just buried his father-in-law (David Pendleton) after a mysterious virus turned the old man’s body into a horror show. Wearing gas masks and staying indoors have become standard protocol, and a red door to the outside is the last line of defense against foreign terrors.
One stranger does come at night and nearly breaches their home security — an intruder named Will (Christopher Abbott), who’s scavenging for supplies to bring back to his own family. Paul invites Will, his wife, Kim (Riley Keough), and little boy, Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner), to live with his clan, though it’s an effort to pool resources rather than anything resembling charity.
Still, Paul warns Travis about their new roommates in foreboding fashion: “You can’t trust anybody but family, as good as they seem.”
As the uneasy alliance devolves, Shults keeps the viewer in constant suspense about where the real danger lies. He also smartly avoids revealing the true nature of the apocalyptic scenario: Everyone is in the dark on how to deal with this killer disease, and Shults uses nightmare sequences and lingering camera shots to maintain impending doom for an hour and a half.
The small cast is solid throughout amid the intimately freaky situation, especially Edgerton, who continues a strong streak of performances that also include
The Gift, Black Mass and Loving. He brings a character actor’s nuance to his lead role here, with Paul lying somewhere between hero and villain — in other words, like any of us would be when thrown into a hopeless state while needing to protect family. Harrison ( The Birth of a Nation) also is extremely effective as Travis, the one who most embodies a semblance of optimism yet also the one haunted by loss.
It Comes at Night ambitiously moves beyond a conventional creepfest or a film built on cheap scares and big swerves. Instead, it’s an artful, often Hitchcockian look at our own human failings in dealing with a threat we know is there but cannot see. Just have an episode of Sesame Street ready as a chaser. You’ll need it.