[projekktor id=’28308′]
How far would you go to protect the ones you love? How much of your humanity would you be willing to sacrifice to stay alive? Your answers to these questions will likely effect how you watch Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes at Night. The cabin-in-the-woods nightmare follows in the footsteps of Jordan Peele’s groundbreaking horror film Get Out as another scarer-with-a-social-conscience, that asks big questions on a low budget. The second film from director Shults (Krisha), It Comes at Night takes us into the woods where a man named Paul (Joel Edgerton), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and their teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) have boarded themselves up in a remote family cabin, hiding from a deadly virus which lurks outside.
Paul runs the cabin with a militaristic rigour, on display in the opening scene as he executes and incinerates an infected family member with brutal efficiency. He has clearly kept his family alive thus far by abiding by strict rules and taking no chances. The family wear gas masks and gloves when dealing with anything suspicious. They keep a pair of doors to the outside closed at all times. They boil their water despite the fact that it comes from a well. Sarah is equally as regimented as Paul, and the family dinner table feels more like a military briefing than a happy home; but such are the realities of the post-apocalypse. Travis is the family member most openly struggling with the horror of their situation. Spoken down to by his overbearing father, his only empathetic companion is the family dog. He is also haunted by nightmares about the dark woods looming outside the cabin, nightmares that slowly begin to blend with reality making you unsure what is real and what is imagined.
Life at the cabin is disrupted when a family arrives seeking water and shelter. Will (Christopher Abbot), Kim (Riley Keough) and their young son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner) are greeted with suspicion by Paul and Sarah. However after a period of distrust they’re allowed to join the family, provided they follow the rules and always, always keep the doors shut. For a moment the newcomers add some much needed positive energy to the place. Will takes on a fatherly role, teaching Travis to chop wood. Kim provides a sympathetic ear, and stirs the sexual interest of the teenage boy. This is a horror film however, and as quickly as the families reach Swiss Family Robinson levels of tranquility, a series of small events begin to drive a wedge between them.
It Comes at Night is not a film that aims to have you jumping out of your seat. Instead, it worms its way under your skin, relying on the horror of paranoia to do the work. The actors deliver natural performances, capturing the reality of normal people pushed to their limits, perpetually fighting a rising panic. Brian McOmber’s score is a lot of typical horror strings, but does have moments of greatness, including a drum-thumping truck drive through the woods. Shults and cinematographer Drew Daniels aren’t showy, often training the camera on the empty woods or the cabin’s dark shadows, allowing the viewer to fill the environment with dread. It’s a subjective viewing experience, largely free of the jump scares and misdirects typical of the genre.
In this way it may not be for everyone. I compared the film to Get Out in that it’s a horror indie with something to say (Get Out took a horror premise and used it to examine racism in America, while It Comes at Night directly addresses the xenophobia and isolationism so present in world politics today), however a far more accurate comparison would be another recent A24 release, Robert Eggers’ The Witch. Like Eggers, Shults sets his characters against the terror of the unknown and lets them slowly turn on each other. Unlike Eggers’ film though, Shults leaves us in the wilderness, still pondering what this “It” is long after the credits roll. And that’s the scariest thing of all.
Reviewed by Evan Arppe.
