An underdeveloped virus epidemic has devastated the United States of America. The constant fear of it spreading fuels the paranoia of a small family as they come into contact and eventually welcome in another group of three to their boarded up house in the woods. IT COMES AT NIGHT is a pretentious slog, offering up nothing new to the thriller genre and possessing one of the most egregious movie titles of the year. There is no real monster, no "it" that is feared by everyone, travels under the night sky and looking for fresh meat. Instead, get ready for the shoe to drop, the "it" is really fear itself! Oh my god, I just can't believe Trey Edward Shults came up with such a brave idea for his art horror film! Honestly though, Shults fails spectacularly when highlighting the uneasiness between strangers because of the worn out script, generic ambiguity, molasses slow pacing, and the utilization of cheap jump scares and music stings when it's clearly displayed to the viewer that nothing is really there. He is so preoccupied with the film's poor overall artistic design that he literally forgets to have a proper third act, instead going with an unbelievably rushed out bleak ending that would be haunting if it wasn't so incompetently handled. Also not helping the experience of sitting through this bore is the fact that the often mute main character, played by newcomer Kelvin Harrison Jr., is a man in his twenties playing a 17-year-old who's plainly delusional at times, somehow has the same intelligence level as the little kid character, and likes to creepily listen to his parents and the adult strangers talk and get it on. The acting is fine overall, with Joel Edgerton as the intelligent yet dangerous man of the house being the sole standout, but it along with some striking cinematography can't save this direly predictable tale of distrust that produces nil scares and plenty of snores. Even those that enjoy it will never want to watch it again.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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