As a mysterious plague ravages the world, one small family has holed up in a remote house in forested foothills. Mourning the loss of their patriarch "Bud", his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson remove the body from the premises and burn it in a shallow grave. The disease (if that is what it is) is apparently highly contagious, and the family redoubles its quarantine. One night soon after, they catch an intruder, desperate for water and shelter, whose family is hiding nearby. Once these newcomers arrive, however, the dynamics of these survivors clash and sorely test the bonds of family and of civilization.
It Comes at Night, the second directorial venture from Trey Edward Shults, is an absorbing work. The definition of minimalist, the film reminds us that in our age of live-streaming and big-budget digital effects the most horrifying things are often what we don't see. In fact, it feels less like a feature film and more like a play: long shots, deliberately stretched dialogue and scenes, almost entirely taking place within a small boarded-up house in the hills. In fact, the only "spectacle" in the film comes, as the title suggests, at night, in the form of hallucinatory dreams had by the protagonists' son. He dreams of his dead, diseased grandfather coming to him, boils on his face and black goo pouring from his mouth. The whole thing is quite Shakespearean, if not as articulate.
The problem is, this film thinks it's up to more than it is. It certainly provokes lots of thought and discussion after viewing, if the clan of middle-aged women huddled in the aisle of my theater was any indication. And while it serves up no small amount of atmospheric tension and psychological horror, this film almost never thrills or chills. Maybe it doesn't have to. Certainly true horror doesn't rely on gore or bogeymen, but this movie leaves us with so very little to hold on to. What is this plague? How is it communicable (because several people contract it, and we have no idea how)? Is it local or global? And, the most frustrating to me, what exactly is it that comes at night?
Maybe most of those questions are unnecessary. We've seen perhaps too many plague/zombie movies already, and Lord knows we can imagine the proceedings well enough by now. Perhaps, too, Shults is emphasizing an esoteric or even symbolic ailment: More than once in the family psychodrama we suspect that paranoia, suspicion, or violence are the real disease, and by the end, I for one felt that possibility was more than justified. By the end of the climactic fight scene, you will too.
Then again, I consider other independent horror masterpieces of the last couple years, especially It Follows and The Witch, both of which we might consider minimalist. They don't answer the questions they raise, and their titles are as ambiguous. I'm left, though, wishing that the horrors of It Comes at Night were a tad more fleshed out. Maybe my real problem is with the title. What comes at night? The plague? The intruder? Paranoia? At least It Follows has the decency to embody "It", even when its precise identity is negligible. I guess the filmmakers wanted my consternation, and to provoke spirited conversation. I wonder, too, if with these themes Shults isn't trying to tap into the horrors of our current sociopolitical climate. Aliens arriving at night, "others" stealing our food and water, violence threatening domestic order, medical disaster, apocalypse and its aftermath; there are reasons, you see, that Joel Edgerton's character had stockpiled and reinforced his remote rural house, and certain characters have certain ethnic texture and color.
Ultimately, the filmmakers leave us satisfied if curious, engaged but unnerved, and moved yet bewildered with a masterful chamber piece of anxiety. It may not be a new horror staple, but it's a hell of a flick.
IMDb: It Comes At Night
No comments:
Post a Comment