Well, this was not exactly what I expected. To begin with, It Comes at Night never truly reveals what "it" is, and "it" never truly came at night. In watching the trailers, I went in expecting a horror film. When it opens up with an elderly man dying of what seems to be a gruesome and apparently pretty contagious disease, I continued to believe it was a horror film. Perhaps with zombies. I expected him to come back to life. I won't spoil how he met his demise, but I guess the following is a bit of a spoiler...the only time he comes back to life is in his grandson's nightmares. His grandson, Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), has several of these nightmares, and for a great amount of time didn't really speak much in the film. Plus, he was super attached to his grandfather's dog. So I thought, maybe his character has something to do with "it," especially because there was something slightly eerie and/or off about his personality and how he interacted with his parents, Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and Paul (Joel Edgerton).
More minor spoilers, the closest thing to "it" coming at night was when Will (Christopher Abbott) tried to break into their boarded up home. After showing no signs of infection, Sarah and Paul made the decision to allow Will and his family, his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner), to move in with them. At this point, despite Travis' nightmares and momentary slight obsession with Kim (which is probably normal for a teenage boy in those conditions), I decided maybe it isn't so much a horror film, but more of a survival of the fittest film. Especially since one of the reasons they invited them to live with them is to defend the home should others try to come and break into the home for supplies or shelter. And also because Paul and Will engaged in a shoot out with two other men on the way to get Will's family, which was during the day. So not even they "came at night."
But ultimately, no one else shows up. There's no true horror element, and the only gruesome scenes were the infected grandfather and exchange of bodily, likely infected fluids, in some of Travis' nightmares. And the discovery that it's not a true horror film may have been more acceptable if not for the multiple times the film tried to make the audience jump in shock during about the first third of the runtime, which to me confirmed the film wanted the audience to think it was a horror film.
The film had what seemed to me to be great opportunities to either go deeper or bring in some type of twist. The morning after Travis fantasizes about Kim and then has a late night conversation with her where he talked more than anytime prior in the film and made Kim uncomfortable when he was visibly looking at her breasts for a second, Will ends up literally standing in the range of shot of Travis' aimed gun. For a second I thought he might actually shoot Will. At the very least it would have brought on an unexpected twist, and again maybe show the "it" is Travis. But no, that doesn't happen. Or maybe there was something sinister under the over-protectiveness of Paul, especially given the dynamics between the couple when it came to Travis (mostly seen in Sarah's eyes). Or I thought maybe the film would go into the family dynamics, with Carmen Ejogo being half-Nigerian and half-Scottish, Paul being White, the grandfather looking like he might be of some Asian-descent, and Travis looking like he may or may not be biracial. We certainly come in varying shades, but just looking at the skin tones and features, coupled with an early focus of camera time on the old family photos in the home, it would have been interesting to get some of the family background. Not that it was necessary, but to add something to the film which seemed lacking in both depth and horror. It would have been great for it to have at least one or the other. There were so many things on the surface that the film could have dug into to take the film to another level.
The ending wasn't that great, but it actually matches up with my conclusion about halfway through the film, "What's the point?" In other words, what was the family's end game? What were they trying so hard to survive for? How long did they think they would be able to survive whatever disease or situation going on in the rest of the world? Was the plan to simply die of old age, just the three of them? I won't spoil the ending, but again, I think it pretty much ends in a somewhat pointless manner.
Maybe, just maybe, I missed the major point here. And maybe, just maybe, I missed the "it" that came at night. If you go see it, I sure hope I did and that you'll be able to get the point of the film and identify the "it," so you'll have an experience that seemed worthy of 97 minutes of your life. At the very least, like others in the audience, you may enjoy the cinematography and score, though it too sets you up to believe you're watching a horror film when you're really not.
5/10