Review of It Comes at Night (2017) by Linttaflamingo — 18 Aug 2018

It Comes At Night is excellent for what it is, but it is another movie that shouldn't be called a horror movie. It's a suspenseful thriller with very minor horror elements. For people that want to get scared during the movie shouldn't watch it, because it relies so much more on the viewer actually thinking about it after watching it and THEN getting scared because of psychological elements. And I loved it.

The film is a very immersive and claustrophobic story about paranoia and fear, and what it can turn people in to. It has pretty much no jumpscares since it completely relies on creating tension between the characters which was the most fresh kind of storytelling I've seen in some time. Joel Edgerton was absolutely fantastic. His character on paper sounds very simple, a family dad who wants to protect his family. But Joel Edgerton's performance made him a truly interesting and unpredictable character. He was interesting and charismatic during his quiet moments, and intense when he suddenly turned loud and paranoid. It was awesome and fascinating.

The film itself is very hard to describe. It's the kind of film that sets up everything and makes you think of all these questions, and then just kind of leaves them to your own imagination even though the story and the character arcs clearly end. It almost feels like there's just a whole bunch of movie cut off and left for you to decide. It's at the same time very cool since the whole psychological aspect really started to get to me when I kept thinking about the film and watched some analysis videos, but it's also a bit too much left for the viewer. Like there's a whole plot twist that you just need to realize yourself. It's cool that the director has trust for the viewer, but I'm not surprised that many people ended up hating the film. It gives you a cool holy s*it moment once you start to understand the story, but not only is it a bit unsatisfying in the end, but the marketing was so f*cking misleading for this film that at points it almost felt like the story had been rewritten or something AFTER the trailer and the fantastic poster. Even after I understood the plot pretty much completely, there were still some questions left unanswered that I'd really like an answer to. Like the whole dog barking thing is never answered. Once you understand the plot, the dog barking makes pretty much no sense unless the dog was barking at something else that's completely random. Or why does the family make it a big deal to not go out at night? And we also don't get any backstory for the disease. When did it start spreading and what did it do? I mean I guess I'm okay with having the story focus on a family that's staying completely away from the disease, but it's weird to set up this whole plot and leave us with absolutely no information about the world, only the family.

Even after all this venting, I still absolutely loved watching the film. It's intense, well acted and original and the director was clearly experimenting with this new idea of leaving a lot for the viewer's imagination and that way making the film stick with you, and it is very creative. But he went too far with it. Also, how was the dog able to cut the rope with literally just one bite? Those are some sharp teeth.