It comes at night (2017)

It comes at night (2017)

IMDB rating : 7.7/10 (as on 03.06.2017)

R | 1h 37min | Horror, Mystery

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.

Director: Trey Edward Shults

Writer: Trey Edward Shults (screenplay)

Stars: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo

IMDB link Here

Trey Edward Shults follows up his debut feature, ‘Krisha,’ with a minimalist deep dive into apocalyptic horror starring Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo and Riley Keough.

As he did in the stunner Krisha, Trey Edward Shults confines most of the action in his sophomore feature to the interiors of a private home. But in It Comes at Night, that house is not just a cauldron of domestic tensions, but a fortress against a dangerous world. Set in an unspecified very-near future, when a mysterious plague has apparently decimated the population, the story of a family defending itself against whatever’s out there grabs you by the throat from its first, wrenching moments and doesn’t let go.

The film confirms that Shults, working again with DP Drew Daniels, has a sure and fluent grasp of cinematic storytelling, his stripped-down narrative pulsing with dread and emotion. An outstanding ensemble gives life to every fraught word and anxious silence of the apocalyptic nightmare, with especially powerful performances from Joel Edgerton, as a family’s hyperalert patriarch, and Kelvin Harrison Jr., as the son who senses the limits of his family’s stand against disaster.

Working in upstate New York, Texas native Shults gives the rural setting a heart-pounding intensity. Daniels’ camera roves over a winding dirt road with the same foreboding that it conjures within the rustic house where most of the action unfolds. There’s a dreamlike, terrifying beauty to the cramped, lantern-lit nighttime interiors designed by Karen Murphy: the empty attic where Travis can listen unseen, the long nightmare of a corridor, the framed Brueghel (depicting a plague), the omen of a heavy red door. Brian McOmber’s tormented heartbeat of a score heightens the horror every step of the way.

With his fine cast and his gracefully restrained screenplay, Shults makes horror recognizable. The “It” of his title is no less a mystery at film’s end than when the story opens with the sound of an old man’s labored breath. But in the movie's dark rooms, the director illuminates tough questions: What does it mean to be a “good person,” as Will calls Paul during their first, wary conversation? What does it mean to protect your family at all costs, and when does survival become meaningless?

Read full review at Hollywood reporter