Name: The Devil Comes at Night
Genre: Horror
Released: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00
Cast: Jason Martorino, Elias Zarou, Jeremiah Sparks, Julie Cohn, Ty Andrassy

The rusted lock on the farmhouse door in The Devil Comes at Night doesn’t just suggest confinement—it screams of a story trapped by its own conventions. Director Scott Leaver’s 2023 horror film, starring Jason Martorino as Mason, a washed-up boxer hunting for his inheritance, tries to carve out fresh terror from the well-worn cannibal cult subgenre but often gets snagged on its own rusty gears.

Leaver sets up his haunted house in the middle of nowhere, where Mason arrives at his late father’s farmhouse only to find himself locked inside with a local cannibal cult. The premise is ripe for tension—isolated protagonist versus deranged group—but Leaver’s pacing stumbles right out of the gate. The first act drags as it establishes Mason’s backstory, spending too much time on his boxer past and not enough on the immediate threat. Martorino brings a gritty physicality to Mason, recalling early Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, but the script saddles him with one-dimensional dialogue that often feels like a poor imitation of David Fincher’s Se7en. The boxer angle feels tacked on, as if Leaver needed to give Mason some skill beyond “guy who runs away from monsters.”

Where the film finds its footing is in the grimy realism of its production design. The farmhouse itself becomes a character, its creaking floorboards and peeling wallpaper amplifying every gasp and groan. A standout sequence occurs when Mason stumbles upon his father’s basement, where he discovers a makeshift slaughterhouse. The shot lingers on the bloodstained table, the meat hooks dangling like skeletal fingers—a visceral moment that finally delivers on the film’s promise of horror. Leaver’s use of sound design here is particularly effective, with silence stretching into an almost unbearable tension before the sudden clang of a dropped knife sends Mason (and the audience) jumping.

But these moments are too few and far between. The film’s pacing is erratic, lurching from slow-burn tension to frantic action without a clear throughline. Leaver relies too heavily on cheap jump scares—a slammed door here, a distant scream there—rather than building genuine dread. Compare this to Fincher’s The Killer, which uses silence and precision framing to create suspense, and The Devil Comes at Night feels like an amateur trying to mimic a master.

The performances are a mixed bag. Martorino’s physicality is the film’s strongest asset, but his emotional range is limited by the script’s clunky dialogue. Elias Zarou, as Jack, the cult’s enigmatic leader, brings an unsettling calm to the chaos, but his character arc is underdeveloped, leaving his motivations murky. Julie Cohn and Adrienne Kress, playing Ethel and Amy respectively, add some much-needed depth to the otherwise one-dimensional cult members, but their roles are too small to make a significant impact.

Leaver’s direction shows flashes of talent, particularly in his use of space and sound, but he struggles with narrative cohesion. The film’s first act spends too much time on Mason’s backstory, slowing the momentum before the real terror should begin. Once the cult members arrive, the tension picks up, but the film’s pacing never fully recovers. Leaver also misses an opportunity to delve deeper into the themes of inheritance and legacy that the premise suggests. Mason’s quest for his father’s estate feels more like a MacGuffin than a meaningful exploration of family or guilt.

Originality is where The Devil Comes at Night stumbles the most. The cannibal cult trope has been mined to death, and Leaver doesn’t offer enough fresh soil to plant new ideas. The film’s pacing is erratic, lurching from slow-burn tension to frantic action without a clear throughline. Even the genre fit feels off-kilter: it wants to be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but lacks the relentless energy and social commentary that made Hooper’s classic endure.

The Devil Comes at Night isn’t without its moments, but they’re buried under a muddle of familiar beats and missed opportunities. Leaver shows flashes of talent—particularly in his use of space and sound—but he needs to trust his instincts more than the formula.