¡QUÉ HORROR! 2017
Candidate #16
(April 2017)
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults' second feature film, It Comes at Night, sets us
down in the middle of yet another post-apocalyptic scenario. To the film’s
benefit, the narrative doesn’t play out as per your usual post-apocalypse de
rigueur.
We
don’t witness the catastrophe that triggers the collapse (and specific details
are never really offered). All we really know is the unfortunate can become
sick, and when that happens, drastic measures need to be taken.
Instead, the story’s focus is Paul (Joel Edgerton, also the film’s Executive Producer) and his family (wife, teen-aged son, and father-in-law’s dog, Stanley) living far away from the city.
Instead, the story’s focus is Paul (Joel Edgerton, also the film’s Executive Producer) and his family (wife, teen-aged son, and father-in-law’s dog, Stanley) living far away from the city.
Shults
tells his story at a very slow and deliberate pace, and some may even wonder if
this is actually a “horror movie.”
Since
it’s in the running for a ¡Qué horror!
2017 slot, it’s safe to assume I believe it qualifies. Because, while the journey
is a slow, low-key one, the ultimate destination is a harrowingly brutal gut
punch, the horror, the kind that underscores the tragic hollowness of that most
banal and grotesque of platitudes uttered in the face of mind-numbing,
soul-crushing disaster: “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
(It Comes at Night OS’ courtesy of aintitcool.com
& bloody-disgusting.com.)
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