The studio behind Moonlight and Room dropped a trailer Monday for It Comes at Night, a new horror film that—in the same vein as Get Out and the latest season of Black Mirror—explores societal fears within the context of a creepy, uncomfortably realistic horror film.
A24’s film, written and directed by Trey Edward Shults, takes place in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a virus that turns humans into parasitic monsters. To shield themselves from the scourge, one small family—a husband (Joel Edgerton), wife (Carmen Ejogo), and their young son (Kelvin Harrison Jr.)—shutters itself in a strictly secured home in the middle of the woods.
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They’ve got an intricate, time-tested system for protecting themselves from the disease outside their doors—but when a stranger appears in the woods nearby, they struggle to decide what to do. The man, played by GIRLS’s Christopher Abbott, claims he’s virus-free, that he has munitions, and a family of his own to protect. It’s here that the larger conversation kicks in—one about trust and to what degree we’re willing to share our lives with strangers.
“For me, the film is about refugees and immigration and otherness,” Edgerton told Entertainment Weekly. “I thought that was really interesting to explore in the horror realm.”
Writer-director Shults made his directorial debut with 2014’s Krisha, taking home two narrative feature awards at SXSW. It Comes at Night, his sophomore film, opened over the weekend at Overlook Film Festival, and critics have already lauded it as “a major statement on the subject of civilization in freefall” and “a paranoid headtrip.”
It Comes at Night hits theaters June 9.
