It Comes at Night

In this superbly crafted thriller two families struggle to survive a global plague that seems to have eliminated mankind. And of course humanity. 

The heroes are a white Roman History teacher Paul and his black wife Sarah and her 17-year-out son Travis. Their heavily secured forest refuge is invaded by a white handyman Will, who persuades Paul to let him bring in his wife Kim and toddler Andrew. Paul has the water, arms and refuge; Will can provide animals for food. 

After their initial violent suspicion the two men settle into a partnership, but their suspicions and paranoia are never quite overcome. The relationship explodes when Travis’ dog comes home with the fatal disease. Travis and Paul suspect Andrew may have it. Will senses that fear. His decision to take his family’s fair share of supplies and leave leads to a fatal shootout. 

The film opens with Sarah’s father dying of the cankerous disease. He’s shot by Paul and burned to contain the plague. In the last shot Paul and Sarah sit alone at their kitchen table, Travis’s chair empty, Travis himself dead by that plague.

The plot presents two plagues. The physical is that disease that claims the grandfather, his dog, his grandson Travis. Will’s family is free of that disease but destroyed by an alternative plague, a psychological one, paranoia. 

It’s paranoia that drives Paul to conclude his guests threaten his family’s security and life. The resourceful teacher’s irrational fear has a rational basis: his family is threatened by a fatal disease and by violent survivors. 

Will’s sense of that paranoia drives him to pull a gun on Paul to enable his family’s escape into an equally dangerous outside world. Both men are good, responsible figures simply determined to protect their families. This is a tragedy of good intentions. Both are destroyed by the poison in the air, their mutual fear as much as the rampaging disease.

The film carefully avoids any particular time and situation. But one passing joke firmly establishes its current pertinence. As Will and Kim frolic in their bed, little Andrew playfully stabs his father’s feet with a toy. “The terrorist is biting my toe,” squeals Will. He repeats the line.  

So that’s the plague we’re facing these days which the film refracts through the two plagues of blood and fear. The current swell of global terrorism has bred a paranoia and mutual fear that threatens the social fabric, the community of man. That’s the poison in the air which nourishes the two respectable families’ fear, suspicion, and ultimately violent defence. 

Paul’s mixed marriage is not remarked upon. It’s just there, natural, warm, an image of an unusually healthy America. Nor is there any racial tension after Will’s arrival. This directs the film’s conflict away from the racial difference towards an even more worrisome conflict: between families with the same values, the same concern for their own, divided by a not completely unfounded fear and mutual suspicion. 

This film reflects upon the climate that created and is fed by Trump’s six-nation travel ban, a cold-hearted and ill-calculated exploitation of people’s desire to protect themselves and a fear of any refugee, however safe and kindred.    
     The generic title confirms that direction. What comes at night but the monsters of the imagination, the fears bred by darkness and ignorance, the enemies we create by projecting our fears upon some Other.