Filmic Frighteners 2019 - It Comes At Night (15)

If you're lying to me, I will kill you. No doubt about it.

The Gist: In a post-apocalyptic wilderness a teenager named Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) lives with his parents Paul and Sarah (Joel Edgerton and Carmen Ejogo), as they train him up in the unforgiving rules of survival. Plague is the enemy, along with any other humans - who might carry it, or simply have predatory intentions. Or both. When Will (Christopher Abbott) trespasses on their territory, dad Paul's most defensive instincts are provoked. Tentatively he and his wife agree to welcome the newcomer and his family. But the group's fledgling bonds of friendship threaten to be torn apart by fear and mistrust. Particularly when night falls...

The Juice: Written and directed by Trey Edward Shults, It Comes At Night is a dark labour of love, and a deeply human story (rather than the generic monster movie suggested by the movie's original trailer). It's foremost a study in paranoia, where the scariest things to actually come at night stem from within. The anonymous woodlands are a dank, unfriendly character in their own right, with the main family's house doing little either to warm you up. Natural lighting is used throughout and the result is bone-chilling like a northern hemisphere November. Shults (similar to fellow A24 director Ari Aster) rejects jump-scares in favour of the steady accumulation of menace - slow zooms and tracking shots that capitalise on the half-lit locations and close-ups that linger on the characters' taut faces. Of the tight-knit and talented ensemble, Edgerton is a stand-out, fully inhabiting his intense and uncompromising dad. Harrison Jnr meanwhile serves as a remarkable barometer of building tension and Riley Keough - as the mother of the stranger family - will take your breath in one riviting later scene.

The Judgement: 7.5/10. It Comes At Night isn't the end-of-the-world zombie flick you might expect - just possibly it's something even more unsettling. A dark, existential mood piece, it simmers with mistrust, grief and frustrated need, with each plot twist tightening the emotional rack. I love independent horror for giving us neatly crafted and unsettling character pieces like this.

Personal Fear Factor: It didn't have my pulse racing or my fingers clawing at the sofa cushions, but it did weigh pretty heavily on my soul. And the dream sequences are just plain freaky.