'It Comes at Night' may be too dark for some audiences

It Comes at Night is the kind of movie that will inevitably disappoint mainstream movie audiences. It's terrific, creepy trailer and strong critical reviews has some viewers primed for a sleeper summer hit, but I'm afraid few will find the movie as scary as they'd hoped.

Instead, they may find a highly stylized movie that is more bleak than anything else, devoid of much humor and one which seems torn between a more traditional supernatural affair and an intense psychological drama.

There is quite a lot I liked about this movie (the director's follow up to his interesting debut Krisha). Joel Edgerton is once again a compelling leading man. I enjoyed how the film provides little context for its setting and circumstances. It's also impeccably shot and edited. And yet, it felt a little more like an exercise in genre filmmaking than a fully thought out concept.

We are given the impression early on that some sort of highly contagious, perhaps airborne virus has wiped out a lot of the population. Sometimes the movie hints that it turns humans into monsters, but in reality it appears that it's just a very grisly, fast-moving killer.

A mixed race family, of which Edgerton is the patriarch, has their less-than-idyllic, isolated life intruded upon by a mysterious stranger, and then tensions continue to ratchet up.

Kelvin Harrison, Jr., a charismatic young actor playing Edgerton's teen son, is haunted by visions that are undeniably spooky but eventually they grow numbing as they appear to all be hallucinations. And therein lies my problem with this movie. It seems to be trying to give the people what they want in terms of existential dread and jump scares, while at the same time crafting a more artistic, interior film.

There are legitimate questions I have about the premise -- why some behavior is strictly adhered to sometimes, but not other times. I don't mind being plunged into an atmosphere where everything isn't spelled out for me, but I like a world with rules and some measure of clarity.

Director Trey Edward Schults' previous film Krisha was a more effective attempt at genre busting. It is essentially a meandering character study, a day in the life of an unraveling alcoholic. His use of unknown actors is spot-on, and the film has a realism and immediacy that's striking.

While It Comes at Night is effective and engaging, it doesn't feel quite as thematically sound or as structurally cohesive. It's a solid mood piece, with a nice, cruel ending, but I don't know if it will haunt viewers and much as it does the characters on screen.

Which means it probably comes up short once you think about it in the light of day.