It Comes At Night - movie review
It Comes At Night
Plot: Secure within a desolate home as an unnatural threat terrorizes the world, a man has established a tenuous domestic order with his wife and son, but this will soon be put to test when a desperate young family arrives seeking refuge.
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo
Director: Trey Edward Shults
Certificate: 15 (strong language, violence, disturbing scenes)
Runtime: 1hr 31 mins
Release Date: Friday 7th July 2017
Universal. Paramount. 20th Century Fox. Disney. Lionsgate. All of these are instantly recognisable studio names. The utterance of them alone will immediately trigger even the average Joe of moviegoers to think up a few films that belong to them. However, whilst there is no disputing that all of these studios have produced some of the best movies of all time, there is one smaller studio quickly rising through the ranks. A24 is a secondary studio that many of you reading this are unlikely to have heard of but what makes them so prominent in this current age of cinema is their ability to push independent filmmaking and allow their directors to make the films they want with almost zero limitations. They produce smaller, much more intimate films focusing on characters and story. In just this past year, they have been responsible for some of the best and most unique films we've seen in recent memory. Swiss Army Man, Moonlight, The Witch and Room are just to name a few. And now, with It Comes At Night creeping into cinemas, they can add that to their list too.
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| Awww. So romantic. ❤❤ |
The trailers have lied to you. At least, most of them have. What the promotional material for It Comes At Night has suggested is a highly tense, edge of your seat zombie flick. This isn't the case. In actual fact, It Comes At Night is more focused on the intensity between our humans and the frightening situations they could find themselves in when faced with unknown circumstances. This is not a film that gives you all of the answers. Director and writer of the film, Trey Edward Shults, has purposely not made certain moments of the film clear and not explained everything in order for the audience to make their own conclusions from their own observations. He aims to make this mystery/thriller/horror very personable and so it can resonate and play games in your head long after the credits roll. We are never privy to the details that planet Earth has found itself in. All that we can ascertain is that society has fallen, some form of pandemic has wiped out a chunk of civilian population and this film focuses on Joel Edgerton and his family as they do all they can to survive. The best way to describe It Comes At Night is that this is how the uneventful episodes of The Walking Dead should play out rather than suffer in unfathomable boredom which caused me to stop watching the show completely. Not a lot happens in this film. At least three-quarters of it are solely dedicated to simple conversations between Joel Edgerton, his family and another family they encounter. Large scale zombie action scenes and high intensity chases through woods to escape the undead are nowhere to be found. For some, this will be an instant turn off and that's proven when you begin to look at audience scores and some reviews of people that went in expecting a zombie movie. It's anything but. Shults has created a family drama that just so happens to take place in an apocalyptic setting. At times, I can see why some people have reacted the way they have because, despite having a brisk running time of ninety-one minutes, the second act of It Comes At Night drags slightly. It wasn't that I disliked the onscreen action but it seemed to get stuck in a circle in that we'd get a shocking revelation, it would be resolved, we'd see some more of both families working together and gradually connecting and then we'd be back to another revelation. Thankfully, it was only the second act that suffered from this as the first and third act had me enveloped for its entirety.
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| You know it's been a wild night when you wake up tied to a tree with a paper bag over your head. |
FACT: The painting featured in the movie at the beginning is titled "The Triumph of Death".
Similar to The Witch, It Comes At Night prides itself on having creative filmmaking techniques sprinkled in. The Witch had a unique 4:3 aspect ratio and Shults has also flexed his directorial muscles for his film. Alongside the gorgeous cinematography and haunting score that sets your teeth on edge, Shults often plays around with the film's aspect ratio when he wants to tease the audience further. Edgerton's son in the film suffers from constant nightmares in which he encounters some truly terrifying sights. Whenever we enter those dreams, the aspect ratio switches to a much narrower ratio making the action feel far more enclosed portraying a chilling atmosphere of claustrophobia. It may not have helped that I saw the film in a tiny screen but that arguably may have helped the film achieve its aims. Those nightmare sequences are expertly achieved and may place It Comes At Night as one of the better directed films released this year. That's not necessarily claiming it's the best however because there are a fair few flaws that the film falls victim of. I've already mentioned that the pace in the middle of the film could have been tightened up but a problem that I simply couldn't overlook were some of the performances. Joel Edgerton and Carmen Ejogo are giving some of the best performances in their careers (Edgerton provides a masterclass in understated acting) but it's primarily the son of Edgerton's family (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and Christopher Abbott, the man of the second family, that didn't quite give the same level of acting that their co-stars were. Harrison Jr. is frequently irritating as a horny, nosy and foolish teenager that makes decisions without fully thinking them through and considering the consequences. Sounds just like a teenager, right? Well, maybe I just hate teens. As for Abbott, I found him to be fairly dull in his role and never give it his all. I felt like he was holding a lot back and the film suffered because of it. Abbot was mostly redeemable though because Shults doesn't spend too much time focusing on the other family. Harrison Jr. on the other hand isn't as fortunate because, as we reach the film's finale, it's mostly told from his perspective. Fortunately, there is redemption to be found in Shults' creative interpretation of horror and how he implements it. Doing what I think aspiring horror directors should learn from, Shults never clearly displays the horror on screen like some films do when they blatantly shout to the audience with a bullhorn "BE SCARED NOW!!!!" It Comes At Night depends on finding horror in moments you can't see meaning that you are left to fill in the blanks using your imagination which can result in horrifying outcomes. Shots linger on empty forests as we hear the quietest of rustles and immediately brace yourself for terror. It also didn't help that in one of the most tense scenes, a scene which had me hooked with my undivided attention, that a fellow audience member decided that then was the best time to pop to the toilet and use the edge of my seat as a handrail causing me to launch sky high in fright. Honestly people. Control your bladder.
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| 🎵If you come down to the woods today, you're in for a big surprise...🎵 |
Atmospheric, unique and a worthy slow burn, It Comes At Night is an acquired taste and follows more along the lines of films like Z For Zachariah and The Witch rather than more well known 'zombie' films like 28 Days/Weeks Later and the recently departed George Romero's chronology of zombie flicks. With expert direction by Shults, beautiful cinematography and a score that only enhances the horror, this is a film I would suggest checking out so long as you prepare yourself for something very unconventional.
My Verdict: 7.5/10
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