If nothing else, Joel Edgerton is the shining light of It Comes at Night, delivering yet another strong performance. He plays Paul, the father of a family living in a home in the woods during a post-apocalyptic era. He carries a quiet intensity that you can feel, whether you agree with his decisions or not. I thought his constant state of paranoia was exactly what you would expect to see from someone having to survive in the "last days".
As we have seen countless times before, sometimes even great acting isn't enough to save a bad movie.
Paul and his family, consisting of his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and son Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), having been hiding out in this rural home trying to avoid "what's out there". From everything we can gather from the trailers and the early stages of the movie, there seems to be a spread of a viral infection of some sort passed on by human contact. Things quickly take a turn when another family suddenly enters their lives.
Do you ever find out what comes at night? I wish I could ruin the movie and save you the trouble, but it's not my style. I will say this, however: Prepare for a lot of smokescreens during the duration of this film. Just when you think a specific moment is actually leading you to answers, it ends up being much ado about nothing. I felt mislead so much, it ruined the overall experience for me. Sometimes movies are vague for a specific purpose. This one was a little too vague for my taste. A few answers here and there not only would have given the audience a greater satisfaction, but it would have also sped the pace up. Yes, the film is slow. Like snail's pace slow.
I would be willing to give this film a much higher score on one condition: That it was social commentary on all the homicides that have occurred at the hands of police officers in the US recently. Joel's paranoia was an uncanny correlation to how situations with law enforcement have been escalating into unnecessary deaths. What was Joel ultimately afraid of? Losing his own life. As a result, he constantly found himself in situations where he had to make quick decisions, sometimes too quick. Sometimes downright wrong.
If I'm scoring it just as a film and not social commentary, I give it a 69.
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