It Comes at Night's ambiguity heightens its mood and themes of paranoia, grief, trauma, and guilt. The desperate situation makes characters highly motivated and conflicted. Its bottled scale closely examines these feelings with nuance and restraint. There are complex relationships, subjective clues, foreshadowing, constant suspense, concise exposition, and an intense climax. The acting has layers, physicality, stress, chemistry, authenticity, anguish, raw vulnerability, and masked depression. It blends survivalism, horror, post-apocalypse, sci-fi, mystery, and psychological thriller. Ultimately, It Comes at Night reaches beyond fleeting scares into the monstrous unknown.
Technically, It Comes at Night creates potent minimalism. Its visceral imagery uses framing, motion, composition, oners, angles, focus, aspect ratios, and motivated lighting. The immersive editing utilizes slow pacing, inserts, dissolves, cross cuts, jump cuts, montages, and brevity. Its sound adds split cuts, intimacy, gunshots, emphasis, offscreens, smash cuts, ambiance, distortions, and quiet. The music is swelling, cued, ominous, melancholy, atmospheric, and dramatic. Its contained production design deepens isolation and its cast is underrated. The effects offer makeup, fire, blood, stunts, and prosthetics. Overall, It Comes at Night's simplicity allows for haunting messages.
Writing: 9/10
Direction: 9/10
Cinematography: 10/10
Acting: 9/10
Editing: 10/10
Sound: 9/10
Score/Soundtrack: 9/10
Production Design: 7/10
Casting: 7/10
Effects: 7/10
Overall Score: 8.6/10
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