Amazon.com: It Comes At Night : Joel Edgerton, Riley Keough, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Trey Shults, Andrea Roa, David Kaplan: Movies & TV

I thought this would be a home invasion style horror movie, or perhaps a thriller, as some of the reviews I had read before watching the film questioned if it should be classified as a horror movie (in my mind it should, though it has definite thriller elements). It isn’t, or at least, it is not only a home invasion film, as that aspect, while visited a few times in the film, was more metaphorical almost than limited just to creatures or people invading a home. In the end, the home invasion is either disease or perhaps really ultimately death.

The setting is sparse, not a lot is explained, but I didn’t mind that at all, as the film focuses on one family at first, later on two families, avoids info dumps, and shows rather than tells. The world has been ravaged by a highly contagious fatal disease that leaves lots of obvious signs – including the eyes – of a person being infected. One family, the family that starts out the film, lives miles and miles from anywhere in a rather labyrinthine, dark cabin in the woods, a father (Paul), mother (Sarah, Paul’s wife), teenage son (Travis), and a grandfather (Bud, Sarah’s father). In the first few moments of the film we see that Bud is mentally gone and about done for physically thanks to the disease, with very early in the first few moments Travis and Paul performing a mercy killing on Bud and burning his body. The sad family goes back to their dark cavernous cabin, not going out at night unless it is an absolute emergency, with only one door in and out of their cabin.

Except the very next night someone is trying to enter the cabin. It is zombies? We don’t know enough at this point to rule out zombies as it is never explicitly stated zombies were NOT possible. Having read and watched enough post-apocalyptic movies, normal humans are more than dangerous enough when law and order have gone extinct and people are desperate for food, shelter, guns, and in the case of the man coming through the locked door in the middle of the night, water.

We meet Will (though we don’t learn his name immediately), and Paul is forced quickly to decide what to do with the man. Kill him out of hand? If not kill him, then what? Is he infected? Is he alone? Can he be useful? Can he be trusted? Though the decision – for now – is made to trust Will and bring in his family (which felt to me as much a way to verify Paul’s story as anything), there is still on-going paranoia in the background between the two families. Did Paul and his wife Kim leave any thing out of their story? Can they really be trusted not to murder Paul, Sarah, and Travis in the middle of the night or abscond with much needed supplies? Were they or their young son Andrew infected?

The dark woods during the day (away from the more open area around the cabin) and pretty much all of outside at night is a character in and of itself. The forest and the darkness conceal the cabin but also hide whatever dangers are out there. Are there more dangerous people out there, men with guns, wanting to murder the two families? Are infected people on the way to the cabin, perhaps (maybe like Will) having been alerted to the cabin’s presence by the funeral pyre of Bud? Is it something else? When the family dog goes chasing something in the woods, something unseen, it feels like anything can be out in those deep, dark, wild woods, something unknown, unknowable, and deeply dangerous.

Add the excellent cinematography, of Travis or Paul looking down a long dark corridor at the one door outside, bereft of windows and with a single inadequate electric lantern or flashlight, the dark, twisty, subterranean feeling layout of the cabin, and the extremely dark horrific nightmares Travis has of being infected, the film definitely builds up a real sense of dread of both what is outside the cabin, the larger world that is only just hinted at, and how much of this horror that Will, Kim, and Andrew brought in with them, whether they meant to or not.

I will caution the movie at the end is very grim and almost hard to watch, not in terms of gore or blood or violence, though it is that, but in terms of pure anguish and grief (kudos to the actor who portrayed this, it was raw and very believable though debatable if it was fun to watch, though I acknowledge the skill in writing, acting, and directing).

The movie sort of reminded me of a much more somber, believable, updated version of “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, especially the last line, “”And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.” I hope that is not a spoiler and there were a number of differences – neither Will’s family or Paul’s family are Prince Prospero and his noblemen friends, nor is there any sort of opulent masquerade or ball going on (though its seems in one scene Travis draws what look like masked figures in a forest) – but there are clear to me any way similarities. It’s definitely a somber film with moments of terror and horror. It is certainly well made and I am glad I saw it.

It was a well made movie though the ending was a downer, I hope that is not too much of a spoiler, the ending really sticking with me, not in terms of horror or terror but sadness.