The independent filmmaker making waves in Hollywood discusses his new psychological horror
I will pay you ten dollars if anyone comes to me wanting a sequel for It Comes at Night" are not words you'd expect to come from the film's director. Yet it speaks to the personality of 29-year-old filmmaker Trey Edward Shults that a follow-up couldn't be further from his mind.
“It’s too bleak. No one’s going to be like, ‘What’s next in this world?’"
The world he speaks of is a post-apocalyptic one ravaged by a contagious disease forcing a family, led by Joel Edgerton and Carmen Ejogo, to seclude themselves in a country home. It's the arrival of a refuge-seeking couple, played by Christopher Abbott and Riley Keough, and their young son which sends events spiralling out of control.
Critical acclaim and a healthy performance at the US box office – which could well be matched in the UK following its release in cinemas today (7 July) – mark this out as something more than just another slapdash horror film looking to mutate into a bankable franchise. For starters, according to the director, it's not even a horror.
“I never approached it as a horror movie which is what it’s been marketed as,” Shults tells me.
Despite what the trailers might suggest, It Comes at Night is more psychological thriller than out-and-out scare-fest, for the most part being a chamber piece more interested in the claustrophobic horrors within than the dangers outside. Its genesis stemmed from an event which altered Shults' life in a dramatic way.
It Comes At Night - Official Trailer
“I was in grief at the time I was writing. I had a rough relationship with my Dad; I hadn’t seen him in ten years and he got pancreatic cancer. I was with him on his deathbed and he was so filled with regret. It was a life-changing thing. Two months after that, I started writing and this spewed out of me in three days.”
This taps into a theme which also runs through Shults' 2015 debut Krisha, the acclaimed drama following a woman, his real-life aunt, who returns home for Thanksgiving after ten years away from her family. And that theme is fear of the unknown – “the ultimate unknown being death,” he tells me.
“I like being dropped into situations and playing catch up. I approach these stories from the characters' point-of-view so I want the audience to experience that too.”
Shults has established a vigorous directorial presence after just two feature-length films, which is perhaps no surprise when you consider that, aged just 18, he interned for Terrence Malick. As he puts it, the legendary filmmaker “changed the whole course of his life” (Shults' work can be seen in the new Malick film Song to Song, coincidentally released in UK cinemas on the same day as It Comes at Night).
While Malick's features favour ambiguity over clear-cut answers, It Comes at Night manages to take something from both approaches, ending with a final scene that won't exactly send you dancing into the night (no spoilers here) but will linger in the memory long after you leave the cinema. Many critics have applauded Shults' vision, but, to the filmmaker's ire, some have questioned its integrity.
“I’m not a fan of when I feel like a movie is just beating me up purely just to beat me up with nothing on its mind," he states.
“Sadly, nothing has frustrated me more with [It Comes at Night] than when I read an article that says, 'A wonderfully made movie that’s totally utterly pointless’ or ‘A depressing and pointless movie for a depressing and pointless time.’ In general, [the reviews] have been good and favourable, but it’s so frustrating anytime I see that because to me there is so much on its mind. I guess the positive that can come out of it is people talking about it.”
Settling the score, he continues: “It’s a movie that comes from death, fear, regret the heavy stuff. I always knew it wasn’t going to be happy. My parents are both therapists and I think I would be a mess without them and therapy is about confronting things you don’t want to confront, bringing things to light that you don’t want to look at. In a twisted way, I can see it as not bleak,” he says with a laugh. “But clearly the situation is bleak.”
Films to get excited about in 2017
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and Lupita Nyong'o
Plot: No details yet, but it will continue directly on from Rey coming face-to-face with Luke at the end of The Force Awakens.
Release Date: 15 December 2017
Thor: Ragnarok
Director: Taika Waititi
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson, Jeff Goldblum, Karl Urban, and Mark Ruffalo
Plot: Story details are minimal as of now, but Thor's third return to screen has already been teased to feature a loose adaptation of the famous 'Planet Hulk' storyline.
Release Date: 27 October 2017
Song to Song
Director: Terrence Malick
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, and Cate Blanchett
Plot: Two intersecting love triangles. Obsession and betrayal set against the music scene in Austin, Texas.
Release Date: Unknown
Wonder Woman
Director: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, and Connie Nielsen
Plot: After leaving her all-female island, Wonder Woman discovers her full powers and true destiny while fighting alongside soldiers during World War I.
Release Date: 2 June 2017
The Circle
Director: James Ponsoldt
Cast: Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, John Boyega, and Karen Gillan
Plot: A young female tech worker takes a job at a powerful internet corporation, quickly rises up the company's ranks, and soon finds herself in a perilous situation, which that involves privacy, surveillance and freedom. She comes to learn that her decisions and actions will determine the future of humanity.
Release Date: 28 April 2017
The Beguiled
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, and Angourie Rice
Plot: A Union soldier is held captive in a Confederate girl boarding school, and begins to con himself to each of their hearts.
Release Date: 23 June 2017
You Were Never Really Here
(image from Her) Director: Lynne Ramsay
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Alessandro Nivola
Plot: A war veteran's attempt to save a young girl from a sex trafficking ring goes horribly wrong.
Release Date: Unknown
Annihilation
Director: Alex Garland
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Isaac
Plot: A biologist's husband disappears. She thus puts her name forward for an expedition into an environmental disaster zone, but does not quite find what she's expecting. The expedition team is made up of the biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor.
Release Date: Unknown
Wonderstruck
(image from Far From Heaven) Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, and Amy Hargreaves
Plot: The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection.
Release Date: Unknown
Suburbicon
(image of director George Clooney) Director: George Clooney
Cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Josh Brolin, and Oscar Isaac
Plot: A crime mystery set in the quiet family town of Suburbicon during the 1950s, where the best and worst of humanity is hilariously reflected through the deeds of seemingly ordinary people. When a home invasion turns deadly, a picture-perfect family turns to blackmail, revenge and betrayal.
Release Date: Uknown
Okja
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Cast: Ahn Seo-hyun, Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Paul Dano
Plot: A young girl named Mija risks everything to prevent a powerful, multi-national company from kidnapping her best friend — a massive animal named Okja.
Release Date: Unknown
Dunkirk
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Harry Styles, and Mark Rylance
Plot: Dunkirk opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in.
Release Date: 21 July 2017
Mother
(image of Darren Aronofsky) Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, and Ed Harris
Plot: A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.
Release Date: Unknown
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
(image from The Lobster) Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, and Alicia Silverstone
Plot: A surgeon forms a familial bond with a sinister teenage boy, with disastrous results.
Release Date: Unknown
Blade Runner 2049
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, and Jared Leto
Plot: Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard, a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.
Release Date: 6 October 2017
Lady Bird
(image of director Greta Gerwig) Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Lucas Hedges
Plot: The adventures of a young woman living in Northern California for a year.
Release Date: Unknown
The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
(image of director Steven Spielberg and star Mark Rylance) Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Mark Rylance, Oscar Isaac
Plot: The Kidnapping Of Edgardo Mortara recounts the story of a young Jewish boy in Bologna, Italy in 1858 who, having been secretly baptized, is forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents' struggle to free their son becomes part of a larger political battle that pits the Papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification.
Release Date: Unknown
How to Talk to Girls at Parties
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Cast: Elle Fanning, Ruth Wilson, and Nicole Kidman
Plot: An alien touring the galaxy breaks away from her group and meets two young inhabitants of the most dangerous place in the universe: the London suburb of Croydon.
Release Date: Unknown
The Dark Tower
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Cast: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Taylor
Plot: Gunslinger Roland Deschain roams an Old West-like landscape in search of the dark tower, in the hopes that reaching it will preserve his dying world.
Release Date: 28 July 2017
The Shape of Water
(image of Guillermo del Toro behind the scenes of Crimson Peak) Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Octavia Spencer.
Plot: An other-worldly story, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1963.
Release Date: Unknown
Alien: Covenant
(image of director Ridley Scott behind the scenes) Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Noomi Rapace, and Guy Pearce
Plot: Headed toward a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew members of the colony ship Covenant discover what they believe to be an uncharted paradise, but it is actually a dark, menacing world in which the only inhabitant is the synthetic David, a survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
Release Date: 19 May 2017
Baby Driver
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, and Kevin Spacey
Plot: A young, music-loving expert getaway driver is coerced into a heist for a mob boss, which threatens his life, love and freedom.
Release Date: 18 August 2017
Thanks to the film's marketing, Shults is being looped in with the industry's crop of emerging horror directors (its trailer stands out as one of the year's most effective). While he acknowledges his long-term desire to make a great horror film – “I will do one day and it’ll be dope” - it’s the last thing on Shults' mind right now (he would, he says, be “totally” be up for making another film set in the same world as It Comes as Night).
Currently, he's hard at work on a passion project that couldn’t sound further from It Comes at Night: “It’s not genre and it’s not one location". And there is another, somewhat surprising, film idea kicking around Shults' head.
“I have a dream of doing a Kanye West biopic,” he says through a smile. “My dream is he will see and like my movies and let me pick his brain apart - to make the ultimate one-of-a-kind biopic we haven’t yet seen [that will] explore this man. There’s so much to explore. I just want to chill out with Kanye and make something great. I think he’ll like this next movie that I’m writing.”
But, failing that, there'll always be the inevitable It Comes at Night sequel he's convinced isn't going to happen. With ten dollars on the line, we shake hands. What happens if it's greenlit, I ask him. How do I claim my money? “Don't worry," he smirks, "you'll get it.”
It Comes at Night is in cinemas now