Horror Movie Review: Tonight She Comes (2016)

After a girl goes missing, two of her friends and a mysterious set of strangers find themselves drawn to the cabin in the woods where she disappeared. They will soon discover that there is something truly dark and twisted at play on the island in which the cabin is situated. However, before that they laugh and party unaware of their impending doom.  Tonight She Comes was written and directed by Matt Stuertz.

I was thoroughly enticed into watching this movie by its promising premise and quite frankly awesome poster art. Unfortunately, I was duped hard. It had me believing that I was going to witness something of high quality, professionally crafted. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth is that it’s immediately clear that this film falls firmly into the “b-movie” horror genre.

The first impression I had of basically all of the characters was that they were complete idiots. Idiots are fine but an unlikeable idiot is a big problem. What makes them so unlikeable I hear you ask? It’s actually quite simple. The dialogue in Tonight She Comes is horrendous. Some of the crap that comes out of these poorly written characters mouths is just nonsense. I know they’re meant to be drunk/high for the majority of the runtime but still. If it sounds like I took the film a little bit too seriously then that was my mistake. I thought it was going to be a serious horror movie but once I realised it was going for mindless trash I started to enjoy it more.

Still, I wouldn’t call the film particularly funny. It does have its moments, some of which feel like they weren’t meant to be as hilarious as they are. I’ll give Tonight She Comes this, I was thoroughly entertained in an “I have no idea what is going on” sort of way. It’s clearly homage to cheesy “b-movie” horror in every single way. If that is your thing then you will probably enjoy it.

Also, the way the movie has been edited feels off in a bunch of ways. The transitions and cuts are not particularly smooth and there are a couple of very noticeable continuity errors.

Tonight She Comes doesn’t look awful visually but it has an aura of cheapness to it. There is plenty of gore but it’s the cheap kind. It spends far too much time attempting to gross out or shock the audience. It ends up feeling rather childish, unimaginative and senselessly gratuitous. I think I’m actually making it sound better than it is. In fact, it might just be so bad that it manages to be good in a dumb type of way.

The performances as a whole are unconvincing and flat. However, I liked Jenna McDonald as Felicity.

I’ve been quite negative as a whole so I’ll end on a positive. I loved the synth score used throughout the movie, it is fantastic.