It Comes At Night (2017)

A mysterious sickness --which is both wildly contagious and fatal in just a couple days-- has ravaged the land and family man Paul, played by personal favorite Joel Edgerton (The Gift, Black Mass), has himself and his wife and son in isolation inside a massive cabin-y house in the mountains. One night a lone man tries to break in, telling a story of a wife and child and a desperate search for supplies. His story is proven true and pretty soon they're all living in that laughably large house together happily, but for how long?

 So it seems the major complaint with the film so far has been the pace; in fact, the pace has proved to be such a problem Cinema Score audiences are currently holding at a solid D! Now I personally don't mind a slow pace, generally speaking, but even I have to admit it really takes its time. Outside of one action beat at roughly the 30 minute mark not a whole lot happens. The title, the trailer (which is seriously one of the best trailers I've ever seen, BTW), and a weirdly-lingering shot of a particular painting all seem to suggest something more along the lines of a creature film when that couldn't be further from the case. The 'It' of the title is largely a metaphor for fear and paranoia destroying a group from the inside out, which is a type of film we've seen a million times. 

None of this makes It Comes at Night a bad film, per say, because there is a lot to recommend here. The acting is excellent, and the writing/direction by Trey Edward Shults are both great, but none of that saves this from being a perfectly skippable film. I liked it, but I don't feel I can recommend it, so make of all this what you will.