Review: “It’s Coming” will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about hauntings
“Haunted dwellings” is like a subcategory in the horror genre. These are homes and other living spaces claimed and veritably possessed by spirits—ghosts, poltergeists, and such. In fact, the genre's most famous examples are the Poltergeist and Amityville franchises. Director Shannon Alexander offers another haunted-dwelling film that may change what audiences believe with It’s Coming.
First, It’s Coming is a documentary. Everything you see happens in real time. Alexander went to Ashley Roland's home and interviewed part of her family: three of the kids and Ashley herself. Her husband’s ancestral home is haunted. The paranormal things the audience sees and hears actually happened while Alexander’s or Ashley’s cameras were rolling. Shadows, voices, little balls of light following people, and more appear.
In fact, the documentary gets its name from a message that Ashley received when she and a medium, Soledad Haren, reached out to ask the entity what it wanted. The real live hauntings, coupled with the violence and drama of Ashley’s Brooklyn neighborhood, make It’s Coming one hood ass horror film. It all also makes it easy to forget that these events are actually happening to the family.
Ashley’s kids are also very candid, clear, and detailed in their discussion of the hauntings. It’s not Carol Anne in Poltergeist pointing blankly at the white noise on TV. No, Javier looks dead into the camera lens while telling the world what the dark entity “Kitty” looks like and how it tries so hard to “play.” Javier’s words at the end of the film will chill you to your core.
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Ashley herself delivers the details like a lady who is exhausted to the depth of her soul by all the haunting B.S. The way she says, “someone just sat in the chair over there,” or “one of them is in the corner,” makes you wonder if the woman is severely jaded or in need of a serious resolution. I feel it is the latter. Her enthusiasm and eagerness to make the “good” entities feel safe suggest she may have a gift, if the hauntings would let her rest long enough to develop it.
The documentary begins with outside mediums and “ghosthunters” like Harmony and Chris Deflorio, not only to verify the presence but also to get rid of it. They lead Ashley closer to what she is dealing with—the in-laws' ancestors may have played with brujeria and opened a portal to the spirit world that has yet to close. However, none of them stop the hauntings altogether. I wish this were a horror film; that way, Ashley and her family would get some relief in the end.
Another note on how It’s Coming breaks the rules of the subgenre — Ashley comes with her own ghost/spirit! She describes Max, a dark figure that has been around her since childhood. He has never hurt her. In this doc, Ashley learns that Max may be the reason why she and her family have survived the haunted home so far. In the other films, the ghost sticks to one spot. They rarely travel and stay with a person for a lifetime.
It’s Coming speaks to the strength, endurance, and ingenuity of Black women who are forced to save their family from an evil no one else can see. I could write tomes on how we’ve been doing it for centuries. And like Ashley, we are all tired to our souls. I hope the family finds relief soon.
You can watch It’s Coming NOW on YouTube, Tubi, Plex, and Prime Video.
Give it a watch and let us know what you think of Ashley’s family haunting.
