October Horror Challenge 2022 #61: "It Comes at Night"

When this movie came out, the title alone made me want to watch it. I didn't know much else about it, and I still don't, but I'm excited to finally get a chance to check it out. The movie is about life after the apocalypse. The world has changed due to mysterious events, and two families must form an uneasy alliance to live together in order to survive. Unfortunately, they soon realize that the true terror isn't going to come from outside, it might just come from within, where they least expect it.

This movie makes great use of the darkness, both inside and out, but just referring to physical darkness, the movie is very dark and barely lit in several scenes, which puts us in the character's shoes as they have to deal with the confusion of not knowing what is going on in the darkness that surrounds them. The first family we meet is Paul and Sarah and their teenage son Travis. Sarah's father Bud has just died of the mysterious plague that has taken over the world, and Paul and Travis burn his body together after he dies, wearing gas masks to keep from getting sick too. This is what life is like in this post-apocalyptic world, you have to burn your loved ones after they die, and it's a very harrowing scene. Then there's an intruder in their home, someone who breaks in, seemingly looking for food or water, and the family is immediately distrustful of him, which I can see why, but it doesn't bode well for future relations if they're starting off on this foot not trusting each other. They leave the guy tied to a tree for two days, ostensibly to make sure he isn't sick, but I can see this being a bad sign for future relations.

Our first family decides to let the second family live with them, in spite of their initial fears, and this is where everything starts to crumble apart. They might have been better off just going it alone, because there's not always safety in numbers, especially when you don't really trust each other. Things fall apart really quick in movies like this when tensions are high and people don't trust each other. I can't really blame them for not trusting each other, but it just means that things are going to fall apart pretty quickly once they get going, and these people clearly don't trust each other from the start, so their uneasy alliance makes me nervous, and I spend the whole movie waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's very unsettling, and most of the horror in this movie comes from waiting to see what the families are going to do once their friendship falls apart. There is no real gore in this movie, and most of the scares are this quiet horror of the world falling to pieces around you while you try to hold it together. I can see where some people would find this movie boring as most of the horror is psychological, but if that's your cup of tea, then you should check this movie out.