85% of the critics like it.
Here’s what some of them had to say:
Scored intensely and photographed vividly, the electric film imagines a small slice of doomsday with horrific believability.
It’s not a sexy apocalypse, with a disease that transforms everyone into really cool zombies. It’s just death. And it’s not an easily managed “Doomsday Preppers” scenario solved by bulk foods from Jim Bakker infomercials. It’s just doom.
Midway through “It Comes at Night” you might wonder where it’s headed, and it seems Shults may have asked himself the same question. It’s a breathless thriller that will leave you gasping until it finally runs out of air itself.
In the absence of such answers, or the intimation of such answers, or even of characters in pursuit of answers, It Comes at Night begins to seem thin, a torment without purpose.
[A] spare but savage horror movie …
Mr. Shults doesn’t jolt the audience with false scares or showy plot twists. He builds up the dread with ruthless efficiency and minimal gimmickry, relying on and refreshing some of the oldest techniques in the book.
Festival for HORROR 