Tag Archives: It Comes at Night

2019, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Waves (2019): Intense, but Overlong

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After successfully directing a thriller, Trey Edwards Shults (It Comes at Night) has returned to making family dramas. Waves is the story of teenagers and their emotional journeys. Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.; It Comes at Night) is a popular kid on the wrestling team driven by a strict, unforgiving father (Sterling K. Brown; This is Us). The film follows his relationship with his father and his girlfriend then shifts to his younger sister Emily (Taylor Russell; Escape Room) and her boyfriend Luke (Lucas Hedges; Manchester by the Sea).

Shults shoots Waves in a heightened reality. This is the brief period of adolescence on the cusp of adulthood where everything is felt deeply. The vibrant palette of the streets of Florida are slightly oversaturated with colors like Tyler’s bleached blonde hair and the deep blue skies popping out onscreen. His camera moves with a ferocity, constantly tracking in or swirling around his characters, that is matched by the film’s music. Composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the score brings its own intensity that creates an entrancing effect.

This energy extends to the acting as well. All the dialogue is delivered for maximum impact. Nothing here is meant to be lighthearted. Brown, as Tyler’s agressive father, is never at ease. Even in moments that should be playful, like when he arm-wrestles his son, he brings a fervor to his actions that is unsettling. He behaves as if each action is the most pivotal moment in his life. This style of deliberately melodramatic performance, when combined with the visuals and soundtrack, is initially intoxicating.

Shults creates a volatile chemistry between Tyler and his father.

The film’s first half is a tour de force of urgent, impassioned filmmaking. Tyler’s commitment to his athletics, his relationship with his girlfriend, and the impossibly high standards his father sets for him are vividly brought to life. It’s a testament to Shults’s abilities as a writer and director that Tyler’s world is set up using little to no exposition. The relationships are established through the expressive, but authentic performances. Tyler’s arc unfolds explosively with each story beat barreling forward to the next and is consistently gripping with Harrison deftly handling the changes to his character. As his story reaches its crescendo, the film seems to have perfectly captured Tyler’s life and all of its complicated emotions with an intensity that leaves the audience mesmerized and exhausted from its pulsing energy.

Then, unfortunately, Waves continues for another hour. The story shifts focus from Tyler to his younger sister Emily and her relationship with Luke, but the new plot can’t match the impact of the Tyler’s story. It feels unnecessary after what preceded it. Many of the complaints normally thrown at melodramas, that Waves had been able to avoid in its first half, suddenly become relevant. The acting style feels unnecessary when Emily and Luke’s story has significantly lower stakes than Tyler’s story and the new actors aren’t able to match the earlier performances. As a film of two distinct plots, Waves is a mixed bag. It’s an intense emotional rollercoaster followed by an unworthy second story that never justifies its inclusion.

3/5 stars.

2019, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Luce (2019): Mixed Messages

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Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.; It Comes at Night) is a golden boy. He’s a star athlete, incredible student, and beloved by his school staff. He gives speeches at school assemblies and is poised for a great future, but comes from a difficult past. He was adopted from war-torn Eritrea by wealthy white parents and his life seems perfect until a teacher (Octavia Spencer; The Help) finds fireworks in his locker and has suspicions about his true character. As Luce, Harrison brings a smile and expressions that seem kind, but could just as easily be fake and the slightly stilted body language plants enough seeds of doubt to make his teacher’s allegations possible.  Similarly, Spencer seems like a dutiful teacher at first, but may have her own agenda.

Luce has a lot to say about race, primarily racial stereotypes. Luce is a model teenager that seems to excel in every field. Teachers give him the benefit of the doubt and, in some cases, even go out of their way to protect  him, but that luxury isn’t afforded to every student. Other black students, doing the same behaviors as him, are quickly punished and suffer long term consequences. Luce’s friend tells him “You’re not really black” and Luce questions why he gets to be “one of the good ones” and others don’t. This is an incredibly complicated issue and the film uses this labeling to add layers to the doubts about Luce’s actions as the characters and the audience are asked to question their own predispositions to judging someone’s innocence.

Harrison’s manners have a slight suggestion of insincerity that prevents Luce from being completely trustworthy.

In its lineup of topics, Luce goes after innocent targets with no discernable purpose. When Luce is initially accused of wrongdoing, his mother supports him at all costs, refusing to believe any allegation. His dad has less blind faith and when events create reasonable doubt, he spouts, “I just wanted a normal life. I didn’t want our family to be a political statement.”, implying that he not only regrets adopting Luce, but that they did it to make themselves seem progressive. It’s possible that there may be cases like this, but who is director and co-writer Julius Onah (The Cloverfield Paradox) trying to interrogate here, adoptive parents? Luce’s mother points out how they spent years going through therapy with their son to help him recover from the terrible life he faced in his home country, a gargantuan effort that few would be willing to do when a “normal family” is an option. To question people that choose to give a child from a better life, people to choose to face the difficulties the child may bring because they believe he or she is worth, is irresponsible and harmful. Some films tackle easy subjects, some tackle difficult subjects, but in this instance, the director punches down at people doing a demanding and altruistic deed, without provocation or reason. There are so many topics within race relations and stereotypes that deserve a proper examination, but Onah’s shotgun approach hits innocent targets in a way that raises questions about the level of care put into the film’s themes and creates mixed, troublesome messages in what could have been a perceptive thriller about racial stereotypes.

3/5 stars.

2018, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Piercing (2018): Rigorous Aesthetics without Psychological Depth

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A married man with a loving wife and an adorable infant daughter has one tiny guilty pleasure: stabbing people. Coming from Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of My Mother), the story centers on Reed (Christopher Abbott; It Comes at Night) as he plans and initiates the killing of a prostitute to satisfy his unnatural desire. The unsuspecting victim is Jackie (Mia Wasikowska; Stoker) who enters his hotel room expecting a night of S&M. The film is adapted from a novel by Ryu Murakami, author of the book that would become Takashi Miike’s Audition, so those familiar with his previous work have an idea of the kind of twisted events about to play out.

For fans of Pesce’s first film or of Murakami’s novel, the tone is going to be jarring. The source material was serious and psychological. It focused on the past of the main characters and provided deep insights into how childhood trauma and abuse can manifest in adulthood. The film is much more playful. It’s in the vein of movies like You’re Next that offer genre thrills but are self-aware of their own ridiculousness. Pesce takes Reed’s planning of the attack and turns into comedy by having him pantomime the act with a silly level of earnestness. But he doesn’t allow the humor to completely mask the actual violence. He includes unpleasant sound effects for each movement to remind us of the danger at hand. This is a movie that, while gruesome in several scenes, you are meant to have fun with and laugh at.

The clothing is another unplaceable aspect of the film’s style.

The film’s production design is stunning. Pesce has relocated Murakami’s story to the United States but sets it in an unknown location. He uses miniatures for the city landscape that communicate an fabricated world, one that, due to its stylization, is out of place and out of time. The technology shown indicates the story in set in the past, but the exact decade is deliberately obfuscated. Pesce uses a variety of stylistic choices to prevent the film from being grounded. The interiors have green shag carpeting and glistening wood-paneled walls that are from the 60s but the bright colors used call back to Italian giallo movies of the 70s and make the sets feel like dollhouses. The untraceable, artificial setting gives the film a strange, fable-like quality.

Pesce shows clear vision in his adaptation, but his choices often lessen the film’s impact. The film feels meticulous in its planning and execution and the subdued but unsettling acting fits perfectly with the intended tone, but the lack of psychological elements rob the story of its depth. Reed and Jackie’s histories are hinted at through well-executed but fleeting flashbacks yet this isn’t enough to add motive to their behavior. Instead, we are forced to react only to their actions onscreen, removed from the important context of their pasts that was previously present in the novel. The actions, particularly the violent ones, are well executed as Pesce knows how to make an audience squirm when he wants to, but without a grounding motivation. Piercing can be enjoyed for it rigorous details and Pesce’s laudable vison, but the lack of character development prevent the film from engaging on an emotional level.

3/5 stars.

2017, Recent Reviews, Reviews

It Comes at Night (2017)

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In a boarded-up cabin somewhere in the U.S., a family lives in isolation. Paul (Joel Edgerton; The Gift), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo; Selma), and their teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) lead strictly regimented lives. After a needed, but traumatic act is performed, Travis begins to have nightmares about what their living situation requires. Their routine is interrupted when a man named Will (Christopher Abbott) breaks into their house, claiming to be searching for supplies for his family.

While Travis may be conflicted about their actions, Paul has no such quandaries. Edgerton plays the character with a harsh, but necessitated practicality. Every rule they adopt and action they take is designed to protect the family. He doesn’t view things as right or wrong, he sees them as safe or unsafe. When Will enters the picture, it complicates his perspective. He sees himself in Will, another man just trying to take care of his wife and son, and takes some measured risks to help him. It’s the uneasy trust between the two families in the face of the outside threats that is thematic center of the film.

The cinematography, particularly within the cabin, is incredible. Director Trey Edward Shults (Krisha) moves his camera through the house like a cat burglar, smoothly creeping into each room. It maintains its distance however, adding a sense of voyeurism to the images. The sight of Travis quietly walking around the house is always unsettling. His movement is lit only by his lantern whose light reflects off the wood paneled walls like a flashlight held under one’s face during a fireside ghost story. There is tension with every creaking of his steps and the film is at its best when the seclusion and supposed safety of the cabin is translated into fear of the unknown beyond its one entry point, an ominous red locked door.

The foreboding lighting makes their cabin a precarious setting.

There’s a disconnect between what many will expect and what the Shults is interested in delivering. The title, while fantastic for the right type of horror movie, is misleading. It implies that the film is a monster movie, which it clearly isn’t. This is a film that examines the effect of extreme pragmatism created in the wake of a society destroying event. It’s not about creatures in the dark, it’s about the extent to which people lose their humanity when acting solely in their own interest. It’s the conflict between altruism and self-preservation and the risks that either choice creates. The title and marketing hint that there is or could be something beyond the human dangers, but there isn’t – or at least it doesn’t manifest during the course of the movie.

That isn’t a spoiler, it’s a preface. The film does itself a disservice by playing into the tropes of a monster movie. This decision creates an expectation in the audience for something supernatural which will cause many to be disappointed and overlook the other stellar components of the film. It Comes at Night is a deliberate thriller suffused with atmospheric tension that deserves to be appreciated for what it is and not maligned for what it occasionally pretends to be.

4/5 stars.