Although the movie is basically seen through the eyes of a teenager, it is very relatable to today.   A family of four is isolated in a house in a wooded area.   The family has a radio, a water source, a food source, and weapons.   But there is very little national news to go on. 

The grandfather becomes sick with a mysterious disease with icky stuff dripping from his mouth. They don’t even realize that there is a contagion or I think they would have worn masks and gloves to take the grandfather outside the home and gotten rid of his belongings as well.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Will, a stranger (Christopher Abbott) breaks into their house for food and water.    Once they are convinced that he is not trying to kill them, Paul the father (Joel Edgerton) and Sarah the mother (Carmen Ejogo) agree that the stranger and his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and toddler Andrew (Griffin Faulkner) can come and stay.   When Paul and Will go to bring Will’s family to Paul’s house, they are attacked along the route by armed men and survive the encounter.

Once Will’s family is brought back, strange things start happening and Paul thinks that one of the invited strangers is doing things like killing his dog or leaving the door unsecured at night.   Paul’s solution to trouble is to put the strangers out again to fend for themselves but kills them instead.   Also, we find out through a flashback that Paul had shot and buried the grandfather thinking this would get rid of the sickness.  However, he kept the bed that the grandfather had been sick in.

But it turns out that Paul and Sarah’s teenage son Travis (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) would have dreams and do mysterious things at night, unknown even to himself.   And it is discovered that the son also has the contagion, which is the reason why he is doing strange things.

And, in the end, the husband and wife are left not knowing what they should do next.   Have they too been contaminated or are they ok?   Are the water source and the food supply uncontaminated?

This movie was as intense as A Quiet Place (2018) and it had not a dull moment.   It Comes by Night is fast-paced and the flash backs make sense.   This movie is labeled Horror/Mystery but borders on the supernatural in atmosphere.  

I saw Joel Edgerton in the movies Loving and Red Sparrow. 

I saw Carmen Ejogo in the movies Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, etc.

I saw Kelvin Harrison, Jr. in the movie Luce.   I understand that he is in the movie Mudbound.   I read the excellent book Mudbound, but I have not seen that movie yet.

You have got to hear Riley Keough’s scream toward the end of the movie.   It will break your heart.  Also, Riley is singers-songwriters Lisa Marie Pressley and Danny Keough’s daughter. The movie was directed by Trey Edward Shults.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

I wasn’t going to watch this movie on DVD because it was labeled as slasher/horror.    At the beginning, you see and hear someone building something.    You watch the party scene, and you think it’s business as usual.  

But, once it got into the slasher phase, I thought it was intense, and not in a bad way.    It was so well done.   Although it was never revealed why the whole complicated maze of horror was even built, co-writers/co-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods did a great job of keeping you glued to your seat.   Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, etc.) was one of the producers.

It starts off as usual with a nice group of young people celebrating Halloween.    One of whom has been beaten up by her boyfriend, so you are led to believe that the boyfriend will provide the horror.   

However peer pressure, daring each other, was what got them into this mess.   What Generation Z you know is going to leave their phone with anyone?   After the initial stupidity of leaving their cell phones outside as required by the clown, I assumed stupidity would reign.   After that, there were a lot of moments when you hollered at the screen, but not because they were doing stupid things necessarily.

Here kicks in the psychology of knowing a great deal about young people.   The maze of tricks and fixtures looked grungy which added to the excitement of the place.    The place didn’t look like they spared no expense to make this trap, but someone in a mask was seen constructing and drilling things at the beginning of the movie but you sort of forget that while you are getting involved in these young, beautiful people’s lives.  However, these characters were not your usual stuck-up kids.   They were intelligent college kids.

Supervising sound editor, Mac Smith,” used Skywalker Sound’s catalog of sounds created for other films—using sound as a story-telling device”.    There was a good combination of strong and weak characters, but all of them “manned up” when it became obvious that the danger was real.   Many times, though, they failed to take advantage of an opportunity for psychological reasons such as the costumed person acting friendly or acting as if they too were a victim in the same dangerous situation.  

The music was great throughout the movie, but the song at the end “Dragula” by Lissie was so appropriate—solemn yet tender (“Dig through the ditches, burn through the witches…”).  

The clown face on the cover of the DVD reminds you of Stephen King’s “It”, but the character studies in Haunt don’t go as deeply into each character, except for Harper’s character.   

The perpetrators’ costumes were so authentic, much more than I would think they would be when they knew the blood that would be splashed on them.    The costumes looked so expensive and detailed.  Spoiler alert–the horror increases when you see what’s under the costumes.    They were killing for no reason other than they could.

The actors were so talented.    They made a believer out of me.   I believed the danger they were in.  The traps were ingenious.

Katie Stevens played “Harper” the abused young woman who (spoiler alert) turned out to be the strongest-willed.   Lauren Alisa McClain played “Bailey”, Harper’s best friend.    Harper’s other girlfriends were “Angela”, played by Shazi Raja, and “Mallory” played by Schuyler Helford.

Samuel Hunt was the abusive boyfriend “Sam”.   Will Brittain was the new man of interest named “Nathan”.    Andrew Caldwell played “Evan,” the humorous pal skilled in picking locks.

Justen Marxen was the clown, but not necessarily the boss of the killers.

Spoiler alert:   The paybacks were a bitch and made it all worthwhile.   You’ve got to see it!

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

I saw this movie recently and found it so shadowy in black and white.   But that was ok because it and the music added to the mysterious atmosphere of the movie.    A rich widow Christine Faber (Lynn Bari) is haunted by the apparition, voice, and piano-playing of her husband Paul (Donald Curtis) who died two years before.  

Then Alexis, a fake medium (Turhan Bey) comes along to suggest that her husband is trying to contact her, so of course, right away I think that the fake medium is behind the so-called haunting.  You know what opportunists they were.   That’s how they made their livings.  As a matter of fact, Alexis showed the viewing audience every trick he used.   

But, no, her “poor” husband is actually poor, alive, and trying to drive his wife crazy (or kill her) so he can get her money.    Her new fiancé Martin Abbott (Richard Carlson) tries to dissuade her from using a medium.   But her sister Janet (Cathy O’Donnell) falls for the charm of the medium, who is cool—no doubt.

Then, there’s the not-obvious twist that her bum husband is alive and trying to get her money.   He even threatens the medium to get the medium to work with him in his plan.   But the medium finds out that the husband means to start murdering the people in his way and tries to figure a way out for everyone.

The acting is superb.    I remember Turhan Bey playing Asian or other exotic parts but I am surprised to learn that he was Austrian-born Turkish-Czech Jewish and couldn’t marry Lana Turner because his mom disapproved and he never married.    I remember Cathy O’Donnell as the girlfriend of the sailor who lost his arms below the elbows in the after-war movie, The Best Years of Our Lives.   She was great in this movie, too. 

I wasn’t as familiar with Lynn Bari, but her face is familiar to me.   And it seems like Richard Carlson was in everybody’s movie.  I remember him in It Came from Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon (from romance/comedy to horror/scifi later in his life).

Directed by Bernard Vorhaus.   Labeled as a thriller/indie film.

Sources:  Wikipedia, IMDb, etc.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Serenity was a picturesque but very complicated movie to put across. It’s the story of a teenage boy (Rafael Sayegh) who escapes into technology for relief from his and his mother’s horrible lives with an abusive stepfather.

The movie starts literally with a teenage boy’s eyes and your tv screen fills with the computer instructions he is working on. The camera then rushes over beautiful waters to his real father Baker Dill’s (Matthew McConaughey) fishing boat life in which he has no cares except to keep his boat running. He doesn’t even seem to realize or remember he has a son until his ex-wife (Anne Hathaway) arrives before her abusive obnoxious rich husband (played very well by Jason Clarke). The ex-wife asks Dill to kill her husband for $10 million which he refuses to do.

They seem to be kind of deadpan characters at first. The townspeople gave you the feeling of the tv show Cheers—”you ought to go where everybody knows your name” and your personal business. After Matthew McConaughey played in two of my favorite dramatic movies starring him—Amistad and A Time to Kill—he began making movies with characters similar to how this movie began with him being selfish and not caring about anything or anybody except catching the biggest tuna known to man, losing customers along the way.

thought it was a very different part for Anne Hathaway which gave the movie a film noire feel. She usually plays perky but serious young women in romantic comedies except for her dramas like Les Miserables in which she played Fantine, a dying prostitute. Dill’s partner, Duke (Djimon Hounsou), is the conscience of the movie all along and begs Dill not to kill the man.

The son’s imagination is creating all of this to get away from his abusive life. Then the science fiction aspect of the story takes over when Dill is approached by a man (a strait-laced “suit”) who tries to sell him a fish-finder to find the biggest tuna in the islands. But it turns out that the fish-finder salesman (Jeremy Strong) is actually the rules in the program/game who ask him not to kill the boy’s stepfather because it was not in the original program.

Meanwhile, the real son is planning to murder his real stepfather. I will not tell the ending, but it was quite a twist to find out other details which will not be revealed until the end. And, yes, there is nudity in the movie with Dill carousing with the local rich woman Constance’s (Diane Lane) partial nudity who pays him for sex basically.   And, Anne Hathaway’s mostly partial nudity in front of Jason Clarke’s abusive husband and in sex with Matthew McConaughey as she tries to convince him to murder her new husband.

Director Stephen Knight also wrote the screenplay.   The movie was released January 25, 2019: budget 25 million; box office 11.4 million.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin