Review of It Comes at Night (2017) by Micah F — 24 Jun 2017

I'm very picky about my horror. Mainly because it's very hard to scare me, and so if a film can't scare me, I have to ask myself: what more does it have to offer?

In the case of It Comes At Night, quite a bit.

I don't normally do this, but I'm going to describe the attitude of my fellow audience members after the film ended: not happy. "I'm gonna go get muh money back," said one gentleman. The reason why the general audience response is so different from the critical response, I think, is because we have come to expect blood, gore, and monsters out of our horror films. This isn't that kind of movie, and if you go in expecting that, you'll be surely disappointed.

What this film is instead is one of the best acted, well-paced, and deeply disturbing movies I have seen in a long time. It takes its time illustrating its world, and it has a score and cinematography to match the subtle, slow burn nature of the story itself. The fear and tension comes from what we don't see rather than what we do, as limited perspectives and unexplained histories mean that we are just as much in the dark as the main characters. And by the film's end, we still haven't exactly gotten the full picture. But that isn't this movie's point; it is character driven more than anything else, and the questions it leaves unanswered are very intentional.

This is not a film that deals with the supernatural; at least, not obviously so. Instead, it examines people and what extremes they will go to for survival. It will linger with you well after it's over. It's grim. It's disturbing. It's profound. But it's not Saw. You have to use your brain watching this one. If that's not what you like from your horror, then skip it.