Review of It Comes at Night (2017) by Rutger-Kikkert — 21 Jun 2017

It comes at night on technical standpoint is a near-perfect movie. It has great perfomances (especially by Joel Edgerton) and has great cinematography and camerawork. But the story is told in a too arthouse way, combining that with a director who likes to give no answers to the viewers and wants you to interpret it yourself and you have this movie in a nutshell. 1 thing is sure, it's not what they marketed.

We know as little as the characters in this movie which I view as something good, it keeps the mystery going, but in the end we get little to no pay-off which some people may not like at all. I thought it was pretty cool that I could interpret it myself but still I didn't have the feeling the movie got somewhere in it's 90 minute runtime. That's because this movie is not about the unknown entity causing the unknown virus, instead it's about the fear the characters have and how scary the unknown can be. The movie is very atmospheric and claustrophobic and that together with the extremely slow-pacing makes for a movie that isn't easy to watch where everything is quite depressing and heavy. In conclusion, I understand the underlying ideas whitin the movie. I also appreciated a lot of them for the most part. But it makes the movie unrewatchable for me and it's sometimes too vague for me too fully grasp this movie. And even with the great acting and cinematography I still not fully like this movie. The story is too mediocre but portrayed too vague. This movie is certainly not something for everyone but it's sure as hell one to think about afterwards.