It Comes At Night’s Ending Explained

It Comes At Night left a lot of people feeling confused – here’s the indie horror’s ambiguous ending explained. Directed by Trey Edward Shults, It Comes At Night is a post-apocalyptic movie with a difference. Rather than an action-packed fest with zombies running riot, it’s a subdued slow burn that focuses on a family’s attempts to survive in a world ravaged by a mysterious and unexplained virus that has killed off a large swathe of the population. All of this leads into It Comes At Night’s ending which results in a horrific tragedy.

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One of the best Netflix originals from 2018, It Comes At Night opens with an introduction to said family – dad Paul (Joel Edgerton, The Gift), wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), their teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr), and pet dog Stanley – as they are forced to kill Sarah’s father Bud (David Pendleton) after he has succumbed to the virus. The family has been surviving in a ramshackle cabin in the woods cut off from fellow survivors until a man named Will (Christopher Abbott, First Man) breaks into the house. After making sure he’s virus-free and finding out he has a wife (Riley Keough’s Kim) and a young son (Andrew, played by Griffin Robert Faulkner), Paul reluctantly allows Will and his family to live with them. Unfortunately, not everyone makes it through It Comes At Night’s ending.

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Throughout the A24 movie It Comes At Night, Travis is plagued by nightmares about the virus and his grandfather’s death that blur the line between reality and hallucination. One night, Travis finds young Andrew sleeping in his grandfather’s old room and discovers their missing dog Stanley gravely wounded and infected at the cabin’s supposedly secured front door. Distrust mounts between the two families as they blame each other for the security breach and suspect each other of bringing the virus into their home. All of this finally reaches a boiling point in It Comes At Night’s ending.

Why Paul Didn’t Let Will’s Family Leave

In It Comes At Night’s ending, Paul – believing Andrew is sick – forces Will and his family out of the cabin. A fight breaks out that ends with Sarah shooting Will and Paul shooting Andrew and Kim. Later, a visibly infected Travis lies in bed and is comforted by his mother. The A24 horror film closes with a scene showing a devastated Paul and Sarah seated at a table, presumably having put Travis out of his misery and seemingly succumbing to the virus themselves. The most simplistic reading of It Comes At Night’s ending is that Travis was the one who was infected all along and Will and his family were killed for nothing, but horror fans looking for firm answers will be frustrated.

Paul wouldn’t let Will and his family leave in It Comes At Night’s ending because of a line he mentioned in a previous conversation with Sarah and Travis. Paul basically said that if Will’s family leaves they’ll want to take half of their supplies, and there’s always the possibility of the family coming back with nefarious intentions. Throughout It Comes At Night Paul’s lack of trust, which borders on paranoia, greatly informs his decision-making. Like with any zombie movie or TV show such as The Walking Dead, when he believes that Will’s family is sick he feels that it’s his responsibility to put them out of their misery and in an act of self-preservation he kills them all.

What Travis’s It Comes At Night Nightmares Mean

All the way up until It Comes At Night’s ending Travis experiences a number of surreal and terrifying nightmares. While these may seem complex and nonsensical they actually act as the film’s biggest form of foreshadowing. One of the first nightmares that Travis has includes seeing Will with hugely dilated pupils, basically meaning that Will has the mysterious sickness. This, along with his dream about Kim dripping bile into his mouth, foreshadows the events of It Comes At Night’s ending. If one were to interpret the ending believing that Will and his family are the ones that are sick, then Travis’ nightmares perfectly encapsulate and play into the final moments of the movie. This is highly likely in the underrated psychological horror, considering Kim’s impassioned plea to her son Andrew not to let Paul “see his eyes”. However, if one were to interpret It Comes At Night’s ending with Travis being the one who has been sick the entire time then the nightmares could be fever dreams brought on by the illness. Travis’ nightmares still act as a narrative device in this instance, ultimately teasing his fate in the movie’s ending.

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What Comes At Night?

It Comes At Night’s ending doesn’t give away who infected who, nor does the movie offer much information about the virus or what it does to people that necessitates the infected being killed. Similarly, the audience never discovers what the “It” of the title is or why it comes at night. The ambiguous ending is by design too, which is probably why It Comes At Night left critics so divided. It Comes At Night’s director Trey Edward Shults explained in an interview with Thrillist, “A lot of questions are left unanswered. That is intentional. I will say I left things the way they are for a reason and I hope it sticks with you.” 

Ultimately what supposedly comes at night is never truly explored in It Comes At Night’s ending, but audiences can ascertain that the virus’ effects are enough to warrant killing someone. The most obvious answer is of course zombies and based on what happened to Travis’ dog this could be the most likely conjecture. Otherwise, there’s no reason to kill someone after the virus takes hold since masks and gloves seem to protect their wearers and it’s doubtful that family members would kill one another over a regular virus; rather it makes more sense if it were to be a Night of the Living Dead type sickness. Too, the answer could simply just be the illness itself and may possibly trace back to Travis’ nightmares. The nightmares could be a symptom of the sickness with the fever dreams letting the infected know beforehand what is about to happen to them. It’s true that It Comes At Night doesn’t ever let audiences know what “it” is, but these are the two most viable options.

The Real Meaning Of It Comes At Night’s Ending

It Comes At Night’s ending plays off of Paul’s paranoia and mistrust to display the movie’s true meaning. Ultimately, it’s a film about self-preservation, how strict Darwinism hardens those against trust, and how paranoia leads to false if not detrimental assumptions. American culture and capitalism have essentially boiled down to a “survival of the fittest” mentality, and when this adage is applied to real life, it strips humanity along with it. It Comes At Night’s changing aspect ratio marks Travis’ slow descent from being numbered among the “fittest” and his subsequent death. When one takes on Darwinism to the highest degree, it leads to an ultimate focus on self-preservation alone. Self-preservation, while necessary at times, is then taken to extremes, and it’s usually at the cost of one’s own humanity, as well as that of other people. When someone is solely honed in on themselves, it creates a lack of trust in others and paranoia that someone else could rise to the top of the food chain. Trey Edward Schultz hopes that the movie will stick with audiences, and his blatant criticisms of capitalism certainly do with It Comes At Night’s ending. That being said, both the ending and pretty much the whole premise of It Comes At Night is open to individual interpretation and that’s precisely why it works so well as an exercise in this The Lighthouse-type psychological horror.

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