When asked to describe his expectations for upcoming horror pic It Comes At Night, lead star Joel Edgerton pointed to Get Out, Jordan Peele’s electric directorial debut that has scared up $190 million at the international box office – not bad for a satirical horror movie with next to no budget.
Here to lend weight to Edgerton’s argument is the full, nerve-wracking trailer for Trey Edward Shults’ (Krisha) impending thrill ride, which proves that, yes, it comes at night, and when it does, horror ensues. We begin with a striking shot of Joel Edgerton’s grizzled father limping toward a masked man tied to a nearby tree trunk. Clad in battle gear, Edgerton’s protagonist draws his pistol as he inches closer, before taking off his gas mask to ask the question: “Do you have any idea what’s going out there?” The sullen man shakes his head slowly, and it’s at this point the tense trailer cuts to an establishing shot of the forest in all of its vast, magnificent grandeur. Perhaps more than anything else, it’s a neat way to isolate our two characters, and that crippling sense of vulnerability weaves through the entire promo like a surge of electricity hurtling down a live wire.
Also starring Christopher Abbott, Riley Keough, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Carmen Ejogo, It Comes at Night is essentially the story of two warring patriarchs who fight to defend their respective families from a supernatural (?) terror. To make matters worse, soon after taking up residence in their ramshackle home, Abbott’s stranger begins to behave very, very strangely – much to the terror of Edgerton and Co.
Circling back to those Get Out comparisons, though, and Joel Edgerton is hopeful that It Comes at Night can continue to remind audiences that “horror films can be incredibly intelligent.”
Let’s be honest, horror movies have a bad rap. It’s up to movies like Get Out and It Follows — and this movie, I hope — to [remove] the stigma of what I refer to as the ‘blood porn’ nature of horror. Horror films can be incredibly intelligent.
We’ve had The Witch, Moonlight, Green Room and Swiss Army Man – four cult crackers that launched to varying degrees of success – and soon, A24 will hope to extend that blistering streak with It Comes at Night. June 9th is the date for your diaries, and you can find the film’s eerie new one-sheet, below.
