The "plague" horror sub-genre has received a bleak and hyper realistic jolt into 2017 with Trey Edwards Shults' film "It Comes at Night". Marketed as a true horror film and convincing its viewers that there is some sort of monster to be discovered, this film takes the viewers' expectations and flips them on their head.
***SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT***
This film revolves around a family of three holed up in a rural home turned makeshift base: father Paul (Joel Edgerton), mother Sarah (Carmen Ejogo), and son Travis (Kelvin Harris Jr.). It begins with Paul taking his very sick father in law out into the woods and shooting him, then burning his body while his son Travis looks on. The unceremonious burial and Paul's apparent indifference to the burning body set up a continuous lack of sympathy and regret throughout the rest of the film.
Not too long after the burial, a man attempts to break into the house and is interrogated by Paul.He tells Paul that he was searching for supplies for his wife and son in an abandoned home about fifteen miles away. After confirming that this man is not sick with the plague that has wiped out unknown masses of people, Paul agrees when Sarah suggests he go and find the stranger's wife and child and bring them back to live at the house with them.
Paul returns home with attempted robber turned friend Will (Christopher Abbott), his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner). Things start out normal, but even though both families seem content with the situation, the viewers can't help but feel unsettled by Travis's recurring nightmares involving his dead father-in-law, walking down the dark hallway that leads to the front door and jolting awake, and when the other family moves in, Kim approaching him in bed only to end up vomiting an inky black substance onto his mouth.
On top of these nightmares, Travis's dog Stanley manages to snap his leash and runs off into the woods one day. Paul assures Travis that Stanley will come back eventually. Paul and Will share whiskey in Paul's study and begin talking about their lives before the sickness started to spread. Will tells Paul that he was an only child, which raises a bright red flag because, when Paul was interrogating Will when they first met, Will had told Paul that before he and his wife had found the abandoned house, they had been living with Will's brother. Paul mentions this, obviously tense, and Will back peddles and explains that they stayed with his brother-in-law, Kim's brother. The viewers are left with an uneasy feeling as Paul grabs his bottle of whiskey and tells Will he's going to bed.
The families fall back into their routine with each other until one night when Travis is again woken up from a nightmare.
Travis then finds Andrew asleep in his late grandfather's room, apparently having sleep- walked from his own family's room. Travis wakes Andrew up and takes him back to his room. For a moment, everything seems fine; until Travis hears scraping noises coming from the entrance hall. Going down to the door and finding it unlocked and slightly ajar, Travis races back upstairs to inform his father that someone is in the house.
After the whole house has been woken up, Paul and Will walk into the entryway to find Stanley laying there, on the verge of death, wheezing, and covered in blood. Paul shoots Stanley since he is evidently sick with the same "plague" that infected Travis's grandfather.
The families convene at the dinner table and Travis tells everyone that he found Andrew first, then found the door open, insinuating that it may have been possible that Andrew sleep-walked and opened the door. Tensions rise quickly, as does the paranoia that either Andrew, Travis, or both have been infected. Each family closes themselves off in their respective rooms and goes to bed.
Travis wakes up to hear Andrew crying, and he overhears Will telling Kim that they need to leave. Travis wakes his parents up to inform them of this. There is no room for humanity or empathy in the world that Shults has created; Sarah and Paul immediately come to the conclusion that the entire family must be killed if they truly are sick. Travis is told to wait in the bedroom while Paul and Sarah put on their gas masks and go to confront Will and Kim.
Conflict inevitably ensues; attempting to get Will to open the door, Paul is confronted with a gun that he didn't know Will had and forced into their bedroom. Will insists that Andrew is not sick, none of them are, but at no point can the viewers see Andrew's eyes or hands (two places where indicators of the sickness can be seen easily), and Will tells his son to keep his eyes closed. Will tells Paul they want to leave and want half the food and water. While trying to lead his family to the door and keeping the gun pointed at Paul, Sarah appears and tells Will to give Paul the gun. While Will is distracted, Paul manages to get his gun and knocks him on the head while Sarah goes after Kim and Andrew.
Will, Andrew, and Kim are all shot without the viewers knowing for sure if they were truly infected. Shortly after, Travis wakes up one morning to find that he has been infected, and the movie's final scene showing a bloodied Paul and vacant Sarah sitting at the table with Travis's seat empty leaves viewers feeling hollow.
"It Comes at Night" is an art film in every sense of the word that explores the ideas of humanity and paranoia and leaves its viewers tense from beginning to end.
