It Comes at Night is a 2017 post-apocalyptic horror film written and directed by Trey Edward Shults. A family lives in isolation inside a boarded-up house during a deadly plague. When a second desperate family arrives seeking shelter, rising suspicion and fear destroy their uneasy truce and expose the horror of human distrust and grief. The story stays tightly focused on universal emotions and family survival with no visible identity politics, activist dialogue, or representation messaging.
Community feedback
Was our 18% Woke rating accurate?
Loading review details…
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for It Comes at Night.
Woke representation / casting
Visible mixed-race lead family (white father, black mother and son) with a second all-white family. Casting appears naturalistic for a contemporary American setting and carries no story emphasis, identity signaling, or plot-driven messaging.
22%
Woke political dialogue
No political speeches, activist language, or ideological arguments of any kind.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
Core themes remain universal—paranoia, grief, trust erosion, and family protection—with zero foregrounding of race, gender, sexuality, or modern identity issues.
8%
Western institutional / cultural critique
None present. The film examines timeless human flaws in isolation; occasional critic interpretations linking it to “fear-based politics” are external projections, not textual content or activist framing.
5%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. Original story with no source material or historical reinterpretation.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
No anti-woke or right-leaning complaints exist. Public criticism stayed limited to marketing misleading viewers about the slow psychological tone.
0%
Creator track record context
Shults builds personal family stories with occasional diverse casting (later Waves addressed race through collaboration). Producers link to some socially themed indies, but nothing here shows repeated identity-driven or activist patterns in this project.
18%
Production
Movie · 2018
After suspecting that their police officer neighbor is a serial killer, a group of teenage friends spend their summer spying on him and gathering evidence, but as they get closer…
Movie · 2016
Suspecting that people are transforming into malevolent shape-shifters, Wyatt flees to New York City to seek out his estranged childhood friend Christian.
Movie · 2019
After a mysterious woman saves her daughter from a deadly snakebite, a single mother must repay the debt by killing a stranger before sundown.
Movie · 2020
When a father is forced to abruptly depart for work, he leaves his children, Aidan and Mia, at their holiday home in the care of his new girlfriend, Grace.
Movie · 2023
On the day of his scheduled execution, a convicted serial killer gets a psychiatric evaluation during which he claims he is a demon, and further claims that before their time is…
Movie · 2021
Reeling from the unexpected death of her husband, Beth is left alone in the lakeside home he built for her. Soon she begins to uncover her recently deceased husband's disturbing…
Movie · 2020
At the height of the Cold War, a Soviet spacecraft crash lands after a mission gone awry, leaving the commander as its only survivor.
Movie · 2018
Over the course of 12 years, and three stages of life, Sidney Hall falls in love, writes the book of a generation and then disappears without a trace.
