IT COMES AT NIGHT (2017) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

IT COMES AT NIGHT (2017) movie

Genre             |  Psychological Thriller

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   92 minutes

Released         |   6 July 2017

cast

Joel Edgerton ... Paul
Christopher Abbott ... Will
Carmen Ejogo ... Sarah
Riley Keough ... Kim
Kelvin Harrison Jr. ... Travis
Griffin Robert Faulkner ... Andrew
David Pendleton ... Bud

director

Trey Edward Shults

writer

​Trey Edward Shults ... (screenplay)

cinematographer

Drew Daniels

music

​Brian McOmber

film editor

​Matthew Hannam ... co-editor
Trey Edward Shults ... co-editor

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box office result

Worldwide             $​​19,280,931

Australia                 $​​​​​​​​​​​325,720

North America       $​​​13,985,117

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the best dialogue

Paul: I think that Will and I should be the only ones who go outside for a while. We don't know what made Stanley sick, we don't know anything. Nobody touched him so I think we're fine, right?
Will: Positive. You just opened the door, right, you didn't go in?
Travis: I didn't touch the door.
Will: You did what?
Travis: It was already open.
Kim: What? What's happening?
Sarah: The door was already open when you got there?
Travis: Yeah.
Sarah: Then who opened it?

Paul: [Paul takes off the bag covering Will's head, who he's tied to a tree] I just want to talk, and I want honest answers. Do you have any idea what's going on out there?
[Will shakes his head]

Travis: [as the dog starts to bark at something in the woods] What's he see? What's he see?
Will: He heard something.
Paul: Let's get back in the house! Now!

IT COMES AT NIGHT (2017) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

IT COMES AT NIGHT (2017) STORY SYNOPSIS

​After a mysterious apocalypse leaves the world with few survivors, two families are forced to share a home in an uneasy alliance to keep the outside evil at bay -- only to learn that the true horror may come from within.

IT COMES AT NIGHT (2017) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 6 July 2017
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Sometimes movies can be hard to review. At their core, they tell a story through the use of images and sound. Sometimes they stay with the viewer because something in the movie has touched the viewer in a very personal way. Sometimes they stir so much excitement that those who have seen the movie can’t wait to tell those who haven’t how great it is! Then, there are those movies that are such a deep, personal reflection of what its maker was going through when they created it, that the finished product is hard for the viewer to identify with. Trey Shults Edwards’ It Comes At Night is such a film. It’s hard to define. Its subject matter is depressing. It doesn’t fill the viewer with a great deal of hope. Such an uncompromising approach is not what could be considered mainstream entertainment by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, It Comes At Night should be admired for those very qualities. The story feels real. The actors look like they’re genuinely on the edge. The film feels more like a documentary than a drama.


It Comes At Night opens with a confronting sequence, setting the tone for what follows over the film’s 91 minute running time. An old man is carried along in a wheelbarrow, incapable of helping himself any longer; ravaged by some contagion that has turned him into something that is bordering on human and only just alive . A younger man and a boy in his late teens empty the old man’s barely living body into a freshly dug grave. The man gets a pillow, pulls out his pistol, smothers the old man’s face and pulls the trigger. He finishes the job by dousing the corpse in petrol and setting it alight. What is all the more tragic is that the dead man is the younger man’s father-in-law and the boy is his grandson. The world has clearly gone to hell and the prime motivator for action is fear. Fear of the plague that has destroyed the old man. Fear of the death it brings. Fear of the unknown. This is the world that Writer-Director Trey Shults Edwards introduces viewers to and it's not easy going.

Central to the story is Joel Edgerton’s Paul and Kelvin Harrison Jr’s Travis; the father and son seen at the start of the film. Edgerton has built on impressive resume of credits since pursuing a career outside of Australia. It’s hard to imagine him as the lead in a major Hollywood production, but he brings his A game to every role and he seems perfectly cast as Paul, a former teacher whose is driven by the fear that he won’t or can’t defend his family against the apocalypse that seems to have engulfed the world. Harrison Jr provides Edgerton with fantastic support and his portrayal of Travis never feels forced. Despite both the internalized and external horrors that he confronts, Harrison Jr doesn’t force the emotion out of his performance. He allows the character’s natural sense of curiosity to take him down an emotional path until the point that he realizes he needs the support of his father and mother Sarah, played by Carmen Ejogo.


It Comes At Night isn’t a capital ‘H’ horror film. If the prospect of jump scares, rivers of blood and torture porn is the motivation for considering this film, then give it a wide berth. It Comes At Night is a character study in fear and Trey Edward Shults keeps his story and his actors firmly focussed on the task, no matter how insignificant the interaction, detail or word. Edgerton becomes an everyman’s Grand Inquisitor, constantly assessing and reassessing every circumstance he and his family find themselves in. It Comes At Night doesn’t feel the need to reveal a “MacGuffin” at any stage and that is, perhaps, the most frightening part of the movie. Other than the contagion that is killing humanity, there is no supernatural entity, there is no “Big Bad” or Demon from another dimension. The fear is generated by the paranoia of the participants and the instinctive distrust humans have of the unknown. That Edwards Shults and his cast and crew have delivered a movie so effective in its delivery is the most horrific point, should give pause to how we conduct ourselves as a species.

IT COMES AT NIGHT MOVIE (2017) USEFUL LINKS

​It Comes at Night (2017) - IMDb
It Comes at Night - Wikipedia
​It Comes At Night (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes

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