It always happens this way, doesn’t it? The scariest movies no longer come straight out of Hollywood. They come from the low-budget/indie world. “The Babadook.” “It Follows.” Now another tiny “It” movie invades multiplexes this summer: “It Comes at Night.” And from the look of the trailer, this one will probably be freakier than this June’s big, splashy reboot of the deathless “Amityville” brand. (It might even be scarier than the film of Stephen King’s “It,” due in early September.)
Arriving in theaters June 9, “It Comes at Night” is set inside and around a remote house, which is being haunted by some unspecified supernatural menace. Joel Edgerton leads an ensemble cast of acclaimed (and too good for crap horror) actors, which also includes Riley Keough, Carmen Ejogo and Christopher Abbott — the latter who’s become far more than “Charlie from ‘Girls’” thanks primarily to his blistering turn in the drama “James White.”
“It Comes at Night”’s director also hails from greener pastures. It’s the sophomore film of one Trey Edward Shults, whose indie “Krisha” — about a middle-aged woman who epically ruins her estranged family’s suburban Thanksgiving — was one of last year’s most esteemed movies. It’s not too weird a transition from intimate dramas to big scare-a-thons: “Krisha” was filled with stunning long takes, which are all over this goosebumpy trailer. Watch as the camera prowls down narrow corridors or around its terrified characters and try to breathe.
The movie already has strong word-of-mouth, too. It premiered this weekend at the Overlook Film Festival, earning raves from Time Out New York, Uproxx and Indiewire. Eric Kohn, at the latter, said, “there are many movies about horror in the woods, but ‘It Comes at Night’ stretches that trope into a paranoid headtrip.”
And if there’s harder people to scare than film critics, we’d like to know.
Watch the trailer below:
