Though its cataclysm is global, this high-concept monster movie works by
narrowing the focus. Just as the human characters try to cut out noise,
by going barefoot and sprinkling sand over every path, director John Krasinski
(who also co-stars and writes) and writers Bryan Woods and Scott Beck
eliminate almost all of the frills to concentrate on delivering one
suspense set-piece built on another.
A prologue establishes how ruthless the film is willing to be, and
then we pick up over a year into the apocalypse as a competent,
intelligent, desperate family man (Krasinski) tries to keep things
together in his little kingdom, knowing that even the most negligible
dropped clanger will attract toothsome, long-armed creatures with
avocado-skinned skulls which are composed entirely of inner-ear
architecture and teeth. Are they aliens? Vampires? Alien vampires? If
the characters could have abstract conversations, maybe they’d wonder —
but instead they can exchange only the barest essential dialogue, mostly
by sign language.
While Krasinski comes across as the caring survivalist, keeping one of several fires burning in the valley, his pregnant wife Emily Blunt
represents a hope for the future — though the imminent prospect of
soundproofing a baby’s crib suggests a hard road ahead. While Noah Jupe
is strong as the decent, young son, the standout performer here is
hearing-impaired Millicent Simmonds — from Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck
— as the family’s deaf daughter, whose particular issues dovetail
unsettlingly with the approach of the monsters she can’t hear coming.
Most end-of-the-world dramas hinge on mistrust and friction among the
survivors, which was seemingly the actual cause of the end of the world
in It Comes At Night, but this is a rare genre film built
around a family bond that holds fast. A misunderstanding between father
and daughter has to be got past, as Dad tinkers with a soldering iron
and scavenged hearing aids to help the girl. And there’s enough drama to
be had from a nail dangerously stuck out of stairs, a plunge into a
grain silo, a night-time rat-run through a monster-infested cornfield, a
sudden basement flood that draws a creature to the sound of gushing
water, and an encounter with a mad old neighbour driven to the point
when he just has to screw up his face and scream.
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