It Comes at Night

Starring: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough, Kelvin Harrison Jr.
Directed by: Trey Edward Shults
Rating: R
Genre: Horror, Mystery
2017

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A family has built a secure location to protect themselves from the unnatural threats looming over the world. Their safety is compromised when they allow another family to join them.

Review:

Tim: This post-apocalyptic horror movie got very good reviews from critics, but I'm not sure why. We've had so many of these movies in recent years. We've had the big budget ones and the small, quiet ones, with everything in between. It Comes at Night is certainly a small, focused film. That's fine, but we've gotten a ton of these in recent years. This movie isn't as interesting or as memorable as it hopes to be. It feels like a small, independent look at world infested with zombies, but that doesn't make it a good film. Truly, it's quite dull and boring. I didn't connect with the characters. It's so strange that so many critics liked this movie. I didn't see what they saw.

I like Joel Edgerton, which is a big reason why I watched the film. He was fine, but doesn't do anything special. The rest of the cast felt like lower tier talent. None of them are especially memorable or effective in their roles. I didn't care about their characters. There's two families that come together and that combination is what creates most of the drama in the film. The problem is that without an emotional connection, the action is pretty meaningless. The movie takes this slow, quiet look at these people. However, the character building didn't work. The one kid is an eavesdropper. His dad is kind of hard on him. The relationship dynamics simply weren't engaging enough. There wasn't a great enough sense of suspense. So many of the choices in the film were made because of the budget, not because they were the best decisions for the story. We needed to see more, we needed a sense of dread. That simply doesn't occur here. The movie takes place almost entirely in one house and what we see really isn't that compelling.

Now, there were some worthwhile moments throughout the film. The opening sequence was fairly well shot. There are moments when the stranger arrives that are fairly intense. The interrogation scene was solid. A few of the contradictory moments in peoples' stories make you perk up. The ending is fairly decent. The movie did have these short scenes that worked. However, as a film, there wasn't enough here to firmly hold our attention. The movie is only 1 hour and 31 minutes, but it felt much longer than that to me.

I like movies like this and I appreciate that It Comes at Night tried to be different. Unfortunately, many other films have tried to take this approach and its uniqueness has dissipated. This is a bland, generic movie that doesn't compare to others that are very similar in theme and approach. I'd have been fine never sitting down to watch this movie, as its far too forgettable.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Maggie, Z for Zachariah