The crepuscular palette of It Comes at Night meets the teen-friendly curses of Ringu and the cackling demonic infestations of The Evil Dead in this sprightly debut feature from Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou. A sharp blend of psychological reality (bereavement, guilt), potent topicality (addiction, dependency) and phantasmagorial invention (a gateway to the beyond) create an intelligently entertaining chiller that packs a crowd-pleasing wallop without succumbing to quiet, quiet, LOUD jump-scare cliches.
An unexpectedly pointed party opening (as startling as Scream) and a distressing roadkill encounter with a kangaroo (“It’s crying, you can’t leave it like this”) neatly set the scene for what is to come. Two years after the untimely death of her mother, 17-year-old Mia (Sophie Wilde) has retreated from her father, preferring to hang out at the home of best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), who lives with her mum, Sue (Miranda Otto), and younger brother Riley (Joe Bird). When a Snapchat video of schoolfriends using a creepy ceramic hand to conjure evil spirits goes viral, Mia is eager to get in on the game: to grasp the haunted limb, to say the magic words “Talk to me” and “I let you in” and to become possessed by a dead soul – albeit for only a minute.
