Movie Review: It Comes at Night

I first heard about this movie when I saw the film Get Out a few years ago. The trailer gave me nightmares. And normally I don’t watch many horror movies, but this movie and Get Out were the few exceptions because they are scary in more of a social commentary sense. I wimp out like a baby when I see possessed dolls/children, flesh-eating zombies, or shape-shifting clowns holding red balloons, but for this movie there weren’t too many jump scares, and the score did a pretty excellent job of letting me know if there was anything scary in the next scene. While Get Out was scary because racism is a real thing that happens in society, It Comes At Night was scary because it depicts a real-life horror that we’ve been living through this past year: a pandemic. Even though it has suspenseful scenes, it’s not your typical horror film because it’s more realism than it is supernatural horror.

It also made me want to take COVID precautions more seriously. I remember one time I wanted to get some fresh air during the pandemic, so I would take off my face mask, but this movie made me want to take the mask rule more seriously. Throughout the film, the main characters Paul, Sarah and Travis wear gas masks whenever they go outside the house, and Paul constantly tells Sarah and Travis to take strict precautions and not invite anyone into their home. However, another family who is also trying to survive the pandemic begs him to let them stay over in exchange for food (the husband is Will, the wife is Kim, and the son is Andrew).While I will try to not give away spoilers, you could probably imply from the trailer that letting the family stay probably wasn’t a good idea.

I love A24 films because they make you sit long after the credits are rolling and think. This film made me think about the pandemic and how it has forced everyone into survival mode. The families in the film try to build trust with one another as they share space, but one of the members contracts the virus, and that trust is broken in a heartbeat. It reminded me of the pods that people have formed during this time, and while I’m not discouraging people from forming pods, the film makes a great commentary that if I were to invite people over, even if they were my neighbors or my family, I could potentially contract COVID if I don’t practice social distancing or wearing a face mask around them. In one scene that really stuck in my memory, Travis brings Andrew to his parents when he finds him sleeping on the floor in the room of his (Travis’) late grandfather, who dies at the beginning of the film of the virus. But after finding out Andrew has the virus, Paul asks Travis if he was wearing a mask and gloves when he picked up Andrew and brought him to his parents. Travis not taking these precautions puts him at greater risk for contracting the virus.

Sometimes I would scroll past articles about Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health professionals advising people to double mask, or articles talking about what precautions to take. In 2020 some states took mask mandates seriously, while others did not, and many of us saw the consequences of making masks a political and personal issue rather than as a thing you have to do to protect you and others against coronavirus. Even though It Comes at Night came out a few years before the pandemic, it is more than timely, and serves as a stark reminder to wash hands, socially distance, and wear a mask and gloves when interacting with others. It also makes a sort of commentary about asymptomatic people because the grandfather at the beginning clearly has the virus, but Will, Sarah and Andrew, it’s not obvious that they have contracted the virus from somewhere else. I saw this as a parallel to people who are asymptomatic because Will, Sarah and Andrew don’t display visible symptoms of the virus. They look perfectly healthy, but as Paul warns Sarah and Travis, they can’t be too sure about that.

Also, the film felt very real because Travis keeps having nightmares about getting the virus. Because a lot of people are under stress during this pandemic (I am no exception) they have been having disturbing dreams related to COVID-19. I don’t blame them though, because this pandemic has been a nightmare for many: people from all around the world have lost their jobs, their loved ones, and their sense of control and order around their circumstances. I myself have had dreams as of late where I would walk in a store and no one was wearing a mask or I was in a college cafeteria one time and students were trying to enter the cafeteria without a mask on, and my mask kept falling off of my face every time I tried to put it on. So it makes sense that Travis in the film kept having nightmares about getting symptoms of the virus or contracting it from others. These repeated nightmares signaled to him that he and his family needed to take precautions and not get too friendly with the family they invited, no matter how nice these people were.

This film also made me appreciate that I have Internet access and a reliable mail service to send letters to people. The family in It Comes At Night had none of that. They are literally in the middle of nowhere not out of choice, but out of survival, because the place they once lived in, the city, is not a safe place anymore to live due to the spread of the virus. I can text, call, and send letters to people to check in on them even if I cannot see them physically.

If anything, this film taught me the value of social distancing. Even though we have a lot of hope because the vaccine is being carried out and distributed, this doesn’t mean I get to just take it easy and hop a plane to see my friends in other states. Had I watched the movie before the pandemic I don’t know if I would have understood it on as deep a level as I do now. Now that I and many have been socially distancing for an entire year, the film was more relatable. I also think if I saw it before the pandemic I probably would have felt more disturbed because it would have felt like something that could only happen in dystopian fiction. But after living through this public health crisis alongside everyone else for a year now, the film was still disturbing but it didn’t feel unreal, surreal or post-apocalyptic because we are dealing with an apocalyptic unpredictable event. And it’s not like there were never pandemics or epidemics, but this one hit so hard that I was forced to reckon with a truth spoken in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin: that no place in the “threefold world” is truly safe. (WND-1, 891)

It Comes At Night. 2017. 1 hr 37 min. Rated R for violence, disturbing images and language.