It Comes at Night

 

Joel Edgerton

Trey Edward Shults' It Comes at Night is an average thriller that isn't quite able to balance psychological insight with sci-fi allegory. A mysterious virus has befallen mankind, sickening the planet and causing social collapse. A survivalist family of three is making do deep inside a forest where their lives are disrupted by the appearance of outsiders. Trust is built and then destroyed, sanity is lost and gained, bullets are fired. Shults' script is strong on motivation, but weak on backstory. The editing is so perfunctory that it undermines strong scenes, particularly a late night talk between Riley Keough and Kelvin Harrison Jr. fraught with awkward tension. Joel Edgerton is well cast here as a Dad whose transformation post-apocalypse has unleashed his atavism. Edgerton strikes me as a good actor whose lack of personality and outstanding looks doom him to second banana or villain roles, so a flawed lead in a B picture is a good fit. This is a competent B nether memorable nor incisive enough to rise above the script's occasional inanities.