It Comes at Night **** (2017, Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Kelvin Harrison Jr, Riley Keough) – Movie Review

‘I think they’re sick. You don’t get it, if they’re sick, then I am too.’ Writer-director Trey Edward Shults’s good but gloomy and depressing horror movie stars Joel Edgerton, who is doing his usual sterling job here, putting the edgy into Edgerton as Paul, the ultimate survivalist dad in a world of demons, monsters or… well what exactly?

Paul has managed to establish some kind of domestic order in the post-apocalypse chaos, living with his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and 19-year-old son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr) in a large, abandoned-looking, boarded-up house in the woods, as an unnatural threat terrorises the world.

A man tries to break in to the house at night and Paul deals with him ruthlessly, knocking him out, tying him up to a tree with a bag over his head (‘I want honest answers. Do you have any idea what’s going on out there?’). But, later under duress and questioning, he eventually reveals his name is Will (Christopher Abbott) and he is looking for water to keep his wife and child alive. He seems plausible and the sceptical Paul is finally convinced – though his advice to his son remains ‘ ‘trust no one’ and ‘you can’t trust anyone but family’.

Paul and Will set off in the car together, and the ensuing arrival of the desperate young wife Kim (Riley Keough) and small child seeking refuge is a situation that starts well (‘ I’m going to try and help you and your family’) but soon leads to mistrust and paranoia. It finally puts Paul and his family to an ultimate life-or-death test as the horrors outside creep ever closer. Paul’s battle to protect his family is so agonisingly full on it hurts.

[Spoiler alert] Shults keeps his film very tense, taut, eerie and sometimes scary. It movies along grippingly and swiftly for its 90 minutes, concentrating hard on developing the situations and characters, without really ever feeling the need of trying to explain itself. It’s like an Agatha Christie without the final scene revelation of the killer. In that way, the film boldly ends rather inconclusively and at an unsatisfying point in the story.

You feel there’s more of the story. The film is entirely complete but, to pull it in on the $5,000,000 budget, maybe they have to tear up a few pages of the script at the end. This slightly means it doesn’t send you home with a huge surge of relief or good feeling. But, as soon as you think it over, you are back in the mindset of just how good the movie is.

The title is catchy but probably a mistake, as it is hugely misleading, promising a monster movie that just isn’t the film we get.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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