Best thing you'll see all week: It Comes at Night

Hehe. “Poots”.

Not necessarily. If the 18 year old kid was sleepwalking (his nightmare visions) and opened the door, and got exposed to the dog when he brought it in. Then he exposed the kid when he returned him to bed. So this means ultimately both kids were sick, and it was the 18 year old kid’s fault, he would have exposed anyone regardless of whether they were there or not. I think this is the most correct reading of the ending, since it does properly explain the main thing I was annoyed about.

What that doesn’t explain, is how the door got unlocked at all, by anyone, when supposedly the main dude keeps the key around his neck at all times. We had a whole scene about this, making that point.

Am I missing some reason to infer that Travis sleepwalked the door open? That seems like quite a stretch, but I might not be remembering something.

Well, yeah, exactly! Seems to me the mystery of who opened the door is deliberately unanswered. It’s kind of important that the movie doesn’t explain it, for the same reason that the pronoun in the title remains non-specific. :)

-Tom

A lot of people think that’s what has to have happened. And it’s consistent with his nightmares. It also plausibly explains the boy being sick, too.

Here’s what the director has to say.

I’ll say this. I think I’m doing less to mess with you than you think, and I’m not trying to mess with you, and it’s not that nutty. If you listen to the words that she says to her son, you think about those words at the beginning of the film, you think about the way Travis looks in bed and then the way Travis looks in that hallway and what that hallway means and what going through that door means, I think it’s all pretty clear. It breaks my heart a bit.

I continue to maintain that I wouldn’t recommend this to people who weren’t already fans of the horror genre. But it’s clear that this is the kind of movie that makes you think, in the most existental sense of the word, and that’s a hallmark of a great movie.

That’s in response to the rather obvious question of whether Travis has died. :) He’s humoring the idiot interviewer who’s trying to float his own theories, such as “the plague isn’t real”. You’ll note the dude specifically asks him, later in the interview, “Who opened the door?” Trey Edwards Shults declines to answer.

Unless I’m overlooking something, which is entirely possible, there’s no internal support for Travis sleepwalk opening a locked door. Which isn’t to say it’s an incorrect interpretation! I just think it’s something you’ve decided and not something the movie told you.

-Tom

Are there any other plausible explanations?

Yes. Namely, that we have no way of knowing because the movie isn’t interested in telling us. Allow me to quote some reviewer:

-Tom

Wait, so you guys didn’t do a podcast about this movie? Damn. I was looking forward to that almost as much as I enjoyed the film.

But isn’t that just, like, life, man?

I will say I have thought about this movie a fair bit, and to me that is a sign of a good movie.