Its origins are important. Shults has been open about the fact that he didn’t have much of a relationship with his father, and that the two of them only really came back together when his dad was dying. He wrote the first draft of the script to It Comes At Night in pretty much the immediate aftermath of his father’s death, and the power of the motion throughout the finished film is real evidence of that. The film opens with a shocking, destabilising moment, but then shifts its goalposts a little, taking a little influence from Jeff Nichols’ outstanding Take Shelter, and evoking memories of Chris Gorak’s 2006 drama Right At Your Door. There is a problem in a film being so relentlessly uncomfortable. It doesn’t help that the movie is being promoted as a horror movie, when it clearly isn’t. This is a mix of things: a bit of thriller, a bit of horror, but at heart, a drama that may even benefit from the claustrophobia of the stage as much as film. The narrative feels a little uneven at times too, and as odd as it might sound, it doesn’t feel like the shortest 91 minute film. It’d be remiss too not the mention the divide between audiences and critics on its US release. Whereas the film has earned mainly strong reviews, there’s been a little bit of an audience backlash against it. I contend that’s a by-product of how the film has been sold, though. That its marketing got it to the top ten at the US box office, but its director, conversely, never envisaged it as a mass market film. It Comes At Night is in UK cinemas now.
