"It Comes at Night" -- A Psychological Horror

Last night I watched “It Comes at Night”. I have never before experienced such a strong audience reaction, at the end of a film, as what I saw and heard after this one. Clearly, the film had a powerful and disturbing effect on its viewers, even if they could not quite put a finger on what disturbed them.

The movie would have to fall under the category of “psychological horror”. It did not provide the gratuitous spooky doom that is characteristic of horror flicks that go for cheaper thrills. This movie creates a “slow-burn” fear, where what is most frightening is what goes on in the minds of the characters and the audience.

Because of the nature of psychological horror, I can’t say much about the film without spoiling it for those who might decide to see it. I can only say that I found it chilling to the core. From the beginning of the movie I found myself challenged as my prior reading of medical ethics leaped into my mind. I kept reminding myself of what I should do in the situation that the characters were in. Then I started questioning what I would do in that situation. I wasn't sure. It wasn’t easy.

Not only did this film challenge my assumptions and values, based on medical ethics, it also raised disturbing questions about what it means to be a family in relation to other families and a broader sense of community.

How much are good people, with good intentions, able to wall themselves off from the rest of humanity in order to protect themselves and their loved ones? How much are we able to suppress our emotions in order to survive? What toll does it take for us to live in constant fear of other people as we try to protect ourselves from getting whatever it is that they’ve got -- that is killing them? Is it really possible for families, for human beings, to live that way?

As powerful as the movie was for me, both emotionally and psychologically, I was unprepared for the strong reaction from people in the audience. At the end of the film, a big guy sitting in the row in front of me bolted from his seat and cursed as he paced back and forth while his date tried to calm him down. He was angry and confused at the film while she was saying to him, “use your imagination”.

When I went into the men’s room, after the film, guys literally came up to me -- a perfect stranger -- in frustration and confusion and said, “Did you see that film? Did you see that film? That was some sh*t.”

Later, as I was checking messages on my cell phone and walking to my car in the parking lot yet another guy who was walking with his date ahead of me turned around and said, “Hey, you were in that film. Wasn’t that some sh*t?” His date tugged gently at his arm and said, “Let it go.”
I don’t know how to account for the strong reactions. My hunch is that guys want to believe that we can protect our families by being strong and cutting off our emotions. At a deep and unspoken level, this film seems to challenge that assumption. The women seemed more willing to accept it, and more emotionally prepared to handle it.

Of course, it could also be a simple matter in which the guys who happened to be in the theater that night wanted to see a horror flick where there were creatures that could be destroyed; what they got instead was a contagion, the fear of which makes people destroy each other.

While “It Comes at Night” is a very different film from “Get Out”, which was released earlier this year, both films push the genre of horror to new levels. They do much more than simply titillate the senses; they send the mind and the emotions reeling.