This movie was by far the worst I've ever seen—not just in the horror genre, but in any genre. If anyone asked me right now what the worst movie I've ever seen is, it would instantly be this one. I suppose I could think of a few other titles that I think are bad, but since I haven't actually seen those movies, they can't be included in my answer.
Where do I even start with how terrible this movie is?
First and foremost, nothing comes at night. Nothing ever happens. This movie is a big pile of nothing—a nothing-burger, as the kids would say. It's a heap of word vomit and pretentious scenes that don't add up to a coherent story, no matter how hard you try to make sense of it. I remember when I saw it in the theater, my friend kept wanting to leave because it was that bad. He never walks out of movies, and I rarely do (the only two movies I've walked out of to date are Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the remake of Pet Sematary). I think he was right, though; we should have walked out. I kept thinking maybe it was a slow burn and they would explain it by the end. They did not.
I don't remember the names of any characters, so to make this simpler, it's going to be like this:
These are the "protagonists" of the movie, if you can call them that, and they are all living in an isolated cabin somewhere in the middle of nowhere, away from a virus that is apparently so bad it's caused an apocalypse. Except they never talk about it, which is unrealistic and stupid. Remember COVID? Remember how people still talk about it? Remember how that didn't cause an apocalypse? Yes, well, that's why it's not realistic. They would be discussing this, especially since the grandfather just died of this mysterious, unnamed disease.
One day, after a bunch of nothing happens, a new guy shows up with a family. For simplicity, I will refer to them as:
When OD sees NG on his property, he gets violent and paranoid, insisting that NG must be sick. Instead of being rational in any way a normal person would, OD decides to tie NG to a tree for 48 hours to watch him—not talk to him or anything, just leave him out there to see if he's infected. Eventually, OD decides NG isn't infected, and NG talks about how he just came from the city, has a wife and kid, and needs to bring them back to where it's safe, begging OD to let them stay because it's safe.
OD doesn't have any questions about the city, the state of the world, the news, or the virus. Mostly, all OD does is hassle NG about how he's either infected or working against them. NG explains that they had been staying with his brother, but he got sick, and they had to leave. Now they are out of food and supplies and just need help. Eventually, NG convinces OD to let them stay and help them. NG, OD, and OS get into the truck and head out to where NG's wife and kid are.
On the way there, they get randomly attacked by bandits in the woods. It is painfully clear that NG has nothing to do with this because he's fighting for his life alongside the others in the truck. Yet, OD is overly paranoid, convinced NG set them up and has everything to do with these bandits—for no reason. Seriously, I watched this scene at least twice, and I don't know how OD got this idea, but maybe they needed to pad the runtime.
Eventually, they get to NG's wife and kid and head back to the cabin in the middle of nowhere. A bunch of nothing happens. Then, at some point, when OD and OS are chopping wood or something, the dog they own seemingly reacts to something it sees or hears in the woods. The dog goes crazy on its leash and somehow gets away to run after this "thing." OD and OS go after the dog, but eventually, it starts to get dark, and OD insists they have to go back because it's not safe outside at night.
This establishes (even if the movie doesn't like it) that there's something in the woods and that it's dangerous at night—hence the title, right? Except, if you were hoping for this to be explained, keep hoping because it isn't. There isn't anything in the woods, and nothing happens at night—not that night or any other night in the movie. Nothing happens. I can't stress how much nothing actually happens in this movie.
Around this time, OS starts having either hallucinations, nightmares, dreams, or is really doing stuff at night, but they never explain the context of that either. Is he sleepwalking? Is it a dream? Is it a hallucination? Who knows? I don't think the movie even knows. He's also having either sexual fantasies about NM or actually having sex with her. Once again, the movie doesn't explain what's real or fake, so I don't know. I can't tell you what's going on.
A night or two after the dog runs away, OS is awake and wandering around the house and sees that a door is open. It leads to a shed attached to the house. He goes into this shed area and sees the dog lying on the ground, cut open and bleeding, clearly wounded by something. If you're watching this movie for the first time, you'd obviously think that whatever the dog was running after in the woods did this to him. Except, none of that gets explained either. Even though the dog is clearly wounded by what looks like a knife, OD keeps saying the dog is "sick," and they have to get rid of it.
After this, a whole debate starts about how that door was open in the first place. There is an argument that NK opened the door, which isn't possible. NK is maybe 3–4 years old and would never have been tall enough to reach the latch on the door. The more likely answer is that OS did it. Except OD and OM absolutely refuse to see any logic here and keep insisting this kid, who is at most 3 feet tall, reached a latch he could never have reached and opened the door to let the dog back in. They all jump to the conclusion that NG's family is infected, though they don't say why or how they know this, and decide all of them must quarantine for a few days.
OD, OM, and OS keep getting more and more paranoid that NG, NM, and NK are plotting against them or something. Around this time, NG tells them they want to leave—they'll just leave, and it'll be fine. The only problem is that, once again, for no reason, OD and OM think these people are infected. They don't have a reason; they just say that. NG, wanting to get out of there, tells them again they'll just leave. Yet, this isn't good enough for whatever reason, and OD grabs his gun, intent on shooting the little kid they think is infected because why not? NG tries to fight off OD but gets shot. OD runs after NM, who is carrying her kid, and shoots at her.
Keep in mind how this is set up: NM is running away from OD, who has the gun aimed at her back. This kid, as I mentioned, is small. Yet, somehow, OD fires a magic bullet that goes all the way around NM's body and hits the kid in the head because when he fires this shot, you hear a scream about how her baby is dead. There's no way in hell he shot the baby with NM's entire body blocking the kid. If he had shot through NM and hit the kid, she wouldn't be able to scream like that. Yeah, so that happens, and we're supposed to take it seriously. Anyway, OD uses this as an excuse to also kill NM and NG.
At the very end, we find out that the whole time—or maybe part of the time? Anywhere between the start of the movie and the last 5 minutes—it was OS who was infected. They don't explain which parts of what we saw him do were real, visions, dreams, or sleepwalking. They don't explain most of what they showed in the entire movie, and then it just ends, basically with OD and OM accepting their fates.
This movie is bad. It's the worst movie. It's so bad that if you put a gun to my head and said I had to choose between this movie and Midsommar, I'd choose Midsommar. Namely because, as much as I loathe Midsommar, at least something happens in that movie. There's a beginning, middle, and end. There's an explanation—a bad one, but it's still there. It's not nearly as tedious, contrived, and stupid as It Comes at Night. Not by a long shot.
This movie is the epitome of everything wrong with arthouse indie horror. I don't know why it's popular. I don't know why it got rave reviews. I don't know who was scared by it. I do know that the writer said it was an allegory or something about his father being an alcoholic and chose the title because it "sounded scary." All I know is that this man should never have been allowed to make a movie, and this movie should be erased from the zeitgeist of media. If there was ever a movie that accomplished literally nothing other than stealing the money I paid to see it, it's this one. I saw this movie back in 2017 when it came out, and as you can imagine, I've seen a lot of bad horror since then, yet nothing will ever top just how bad It Comes at Night is. I don't think that's even possible.
I would have been more entertained watching a short film of them setting the pile of money meant to fund this movie on fire. This pile of crap needs to not exist. I'm glad it's seemingly faded from memory, and I never hear it brought up in conversations about "great horror." Hopefully, as time goes on, it will eventually fade from the public consciousness and never be recommended to anyone ever again. Unfortunately, I had to watch it, but the upside is that now you know how bad it is, so you don't have to watch it. Consider this a public service.