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The greatest horror films are never just about scaring us. The Exorcist or The Babadook may present us with demons, but they are really showing us the hidden evil in our own lives; every slasher flick is really a morality tale in which the smallest sins are harshly punished; and even Frankenstein or Dracula, in all their incarnations, are more about the twisted pathways of the human psyche than they are about the terrors of the supernatural.
Such movies, like fables from the Brothers Grimm, are cautionary tales which teach us lessons by tapping into our deepest fears. Good filmmakers understand this, and they root the scares they deliver onscreen into something deeper than the artificial scenarios that provide them. It Comes At Night, the new thriller from writer-director Trey Edward Shults, aspires to follow this example.
A grim parable about human nature masquerading as an apocalyptic survival tale, it centers on a small family (Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, and Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) that have boarded themselves up at an isolated house in the woods after the outbreak of a terrifying plague which brings an agonizing death to anyone who contracts it. When a surprise intruder turns out to be seeking water for his own nearby family, they decide to invite these strangers to live among them. At first, the newcomers (Christopher Abbot, Riley Keogh, and Griffin Robert Faulkner) are a welcome addition to the household; but after a mysterious event sows the seeds of mistrust, the family begins to fear that inviting these outsiders into their home may have jeopardized their own survival.
Such a premise has direct connections to the kind of double-edged dramas featured on shows like The Twilight Zone, which often presented a “what if” microcosm in which to explore the hot-button issues of the day. The parallel is highly apt to today’s world; in the age of Brexit and Trump, with its resurgence of Nationalism and xenophobia, existential fear has boiled to the surface of our communal awareness much in the way it did during those precarious days of the Cold War era.
Shults has adapted this time-tested formula for contemporary audiences; the conflict he presents reflects the concerns of our own time, but he doesn’t hammer home his point. Rather, he invites us to make the connections for ourselves, and focuses his efforts instead on frightening us.
He begins his film with a traumatic sequence which establishes the horrors of its disease-borne threat while emotionally bonding us to the family at its center; he builds a tense and oppressive mood throughout, creating a sense of claustrophobia — even in the open forest outside the house – which underscores the pervading fear that there can be no real escape; he evokes a feverish delirium by progressively blending scenes of nightmare and reality until we have difficulty telling which is which; and he brings us to a ferocious climax which undercuts its inevitability by surprising us with devastating immediacy.
Apart from its opening and climactic sequences, however, It Comes At Night may fall short of expectation for many hardcore fright-seekers. Although he provides plenty of creepy moments and jump-in-your-seat scares along the way, Shults has taken a less-is-more approach. He seeks to disturb, not to terrify, and as a result the film plays more like psychodrama than horror. This, of course, allows us the opportunity to recognize the allegorical threads of his story and connect them to the issues which it is his real agenda to address.
To a point, those connections are pretty clear. The two families live in a world of fear, and must decide whether to cooperate or isolate, to help each other or look out for their own interests; the choices they make are clouded by paranoia and mistrust, and their ultimate survival likely depends on how well they are able to overcome those obstacles. You can’t come up with a plainer metaphor for the challenge of living in a global community than that.
From there, though, things get a little vague. Following the lead of such recent horror efforts as Robert Eggers’ The Witch, Shults deliberately masks the specifics of his story in such a way that many key events are left for the audience imagine for themselves. This results in an ambiguity which forces us to draw our own conclusions about which approach is right — or indeed, whether it ultimately even matters which one we choose.
While this opaque approach lends itself well to multiple interpretations, it can also create the risk of muddy storytelling. Unfortunately, this is the case with It Comes At Night. Shults leaves a little too much to the imagination, resulting in enough uncertainty about the plot to leave us more confused than stimulated when the credits finally roll. Indeed, this lack of clarity makes the film’s ending seem abrupt, and audiences are likely to go home with the feeling that they must have missed something important.
This is particularly disappointing in view of the movie’s deeper ambitions. Though comparison is seldom fair, one cannot help but be reminded of this year’s earlier social-commentary-as-horror offering, Jordan Peele’s brilliant Get Out, a film which dazzled largely because of the clear and concise lines between its sensational plot and its slyly satirical observations. The intentions are different here, of course, but Shults has chosen to blur his lines instead, and the result is a promise that never feels fulfilled.
This is not to say that It Comes At Night is a failure; Shults is a gifted filmmaker, and he has succeeded well in crafting a moody and engaging thriller. His cast is excellent, and the cinematography by Drew Daniels is a master class in atmosphere. The pieces are all there, even if the film as a whole is unsatisfying.
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