mfunk9786 wrote:Trey Edward Shults' direction wasn't befitting of how minimal of a story this film was out to tell, because he is explosively talented and I just wanted to see more from this than it was willing to give. There's nothing wrong with the film per se (quite the contrary), but it would've been worthwhile for Shults to consider fleshing out the late 2nd act so that the absolutely gut-wrenching conclusion packed even more heft than it did. A good comparison point for this film would be last year's excellent 10 Cloverfield Lane, but that film had much higher aims and hit all of them - It Comes at Night feels like Paul Thomas Anderson behind the camera for an adaptation of an episode of a Telltale video game. I can only wonder at this point what Shults will be able to do if he can write himself something truly transcendent that doesn't carry the unfortunate burden of being derivative of what seems like so many other stories being told in films and television at the moment. For now, we'll just have to live with this pretty good, very tense horror film and wonder what might follow.
Your thoughts here basically summed up my initial reaction to
It Comes at Night as well - an artifact more exciting for the potential on display (both in Shults and the excellent cast, including Riley Keough and Christopher Abbott) than the film itself - but as I've been turning it over in my head for the past week, I'm starting to come around to the view that there's more of subversive value here than I at first appreciated.
The film powerfully illustrates the corrosive effects of fear - and its close cousin, grief - on its central family. While the audience is given most access to the perspective of the young adult son (a quite good Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Travis), whose nights are constantly disturbed with horrific dream imagery, I think the film is even more interested in his parents. Through Travis, we watch as his parents' fear and overwhelming desire to protect him and each other leads them to the most grim and inexcusable of actions - which, of course, are still not enough to protect the family from the dangers of the world around them. The final shot of Joel Edgerton's Paul and Carmen Ejogo's Sarah staring at each other across a table, alone and infected, is a bleak and emotionally crushing but necessary end to the film because it focuses attention on their actions in the face of the fear of death, and how those actions contrast with Sarah's plea to first her father and then her son to "let go". It's easy to tell someone without hope of survival to let go, that it will be OK... but not as easy to act on that directive when you think you can still make it out alive.
I think the audience expectations for a film with this title dovetail with the way Shults constantly stages scenes to suggest that there's something more horrific and less banal than the plague of death that already surrounds its characters, when in fact there's nothing coming at night except the fear that keeps Travis sleepless and drives his parents' actions. Shults expertly beckons the audience to a place where the expectation of unknown horrors makes them more susceptible to the stark "ends justifying means" mindset that drives Paul and Sarah to do what they do, and makes the lack of reveal of the suggested greater threat harder to process than the more straightforward morality tale Shults is actually telling here. The film accelerates the timeline of Paul and Sarah having to face the ultimate reality of what they've done, but even if they'd survived the plague and society had reconstituted itself, it's easy to imagine the couple eventually having to face mortality again, and sharing the same look that ends the film, questioning the cost of their brief respite from the fear of death.
While I still hope that Shults will deliver and develop even more as his career continues, I've come around to thinking that this is a fine film in its own right, and I'd bet that appreciation for it will grow as it is divorced from the expectations and marketing discussed above.
