Butler's Cinema Scene

Joel Egerton, Kelvin Harrison Jr.

“IT COMES AT NIGHT” My rating: B

97 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The “it” of “It Comes at Night” doesn’t creep about on four legs or slither on its belly.  No fangs or claws. No growls or shrieks.

The subject of Trey Edward Shults’ sophomore feature (after last year’s devastating family drama “Krisha”) is fear. Fear of both the unknown, of whatever may be lying in wait for us, and fear of our own human selves which, given the right circumstances, can devolve into monsters far scarier than those lurking in the imagination.

As the film opens an old man is dying.  His eyes are black. Festering pustules dot his  body. Blood seeps from his nose and mouth. He breathes in gasps.

Whatever is killing the old man has spooked the other members of his family, who say their muffled goodbyes through biohazard masks. Then they load him up in a wheelbarrow and push him out to a pit where he will be dispatched with one bullet and his remains burned.

This is the new normal for Paul (Joel Egerton), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and their teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.).  They live in a house deep in the woods. The windows are boarded up so that from the outside the place looks abandoned. They don’t venture outside any more than is absolutely necessary.  They are on constant alert for unwanted visitors.

What catastrophe has befallen mankind that they must live this way?  Schults’ screenplay never provides an answer and, anyway, that’s not what “It Comes at Night” is about.

Late one night the three hear someone trying to break in.  They capture the intruder, a young man named Will (Christopher Abbott) who claims he thought the house was empty when he began scavenging for supplies. Will says his wife and young son are waiting for him in a cabin nearly 50 miles away.

Of course that might be just a story. Joel, though inclined toward kindness, can’t take the risk.  Will is hooded, bound and left tied to a tree.  Eventually Joel decides their captive is telling the truth and agrees to rev up the truck he keeps in a garage and make the trek to pick up Will’s family — his wife Kim (Riley Keogh) and their boy Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner).

The six survivors form their own little society, using mutual cooperation to get things done. But beneath the camaraderie there’s tension — Joel remains ever vigilant lest their guests be harboring bad intentions.

Ultimately “It Comes at Night” is the story of young Travis, who is at first delighted to have a little brother of sorts in Andrew. But he’s also disturbed to hear Will and Kim’s lovemaking late at night (he’s a teen, after all, who has spent a chunk of his adolescence in monastic isolation).

And Travis is an insomniac. When he does sleep he’s tormented by terrifying nightmares of a terrible presence in the house.  The poor sweet kid is losing it.

Shults’ premise that the biggest threat to humanity is humanity is hardly novel. As Pogo Possum famously observed, “We have met the enemy — and he is us.” And what is TV’s “The Walking Dead” if not proof that living people are far more dangerous than lurching zombies?

But the execution here, the claustrophobic interiors lit only by flashlights and lanterns, the performances that walk a fine line between normalcy and out-of-control paranoia, make for an overwhelmingly disquieting viewing experience.

| Robert W. Butler