By Terry Sherwood
Shannon Alexander’s It’s Coming stands out in a genre too often cluttered with gore theatrics or oddly placed practical effects with jump scares. Never mind those “Ghost Adventures ‘this “found footage style documentary chooses patience and sincerity over spectacle, and the effect is unnerving because it feels so ordinary.
The film centers on Ashley Roland-White, a Brooklyn wife, day trader, and mother of five, who has seen spirits since childhood. When she and her family return to her ancestral apartment, the encounters with a man in black watching here from halls and various places intensify. Now she believes her children are in danger. Her son Javier, only seven, chillingly remarks, “I think I’m going to die.” It’s a moment that lands harder than any staged scare could.
Ashley has spent years keeping quiet, wary of sounding “crazy “especially as a Black woman aware of how her testimony will be received. Long before people of color appeared, made, wrote and worked on horror films when the benchmark performance and still is Duane Jones in George Romero’s Night the Living Dead , Comedian Eddie Murphy once joked about why Black people don’t star in films of this nature.: He said totally in fun “you walk into a house, hear a ghost whisper “Get out,” and you get out. White families, he quipped, stay. It’s Coming shows Ashley caught in the cruel bind of that observation. She can’t just leave as this is her home, her family’s history. Instead, she must live with the haunting and risk disbelief from nearly everyone around her.
Alexander gives her what she admits she’s never had: a safe space to speak. His voice is occasionally heard behind the camera, curious but never condescending. He is almost in the tone of an episode from MASH television series called The Interview in which News man and real war Correspondent Clete Roberts interviews the members of the 4077th in a format. He lets the characters tell their stories and doesn’t push or sensationalize; he listens. That decision to let testimony breathe—makes the film deeply unsettling.
At about the thirty-minute mark, the documentary shifts from testimony to direct encounters. A Ouija board session feels reckless, even tragic. An EVP experiment raises goosebumps. Technical malfunctions and a startling boom-mic incident are captured on camera. Nothing feels staged, and because the family reacts with the same subdued dread you would expect from people long used to this, the effect lingers.
The middle is by far the most chilling. Javier describes his supernatural “friend” Mister Kitty with a child’s casual honesty which is half charming, half terrifying. His siblings echo their fears with the kind of plainspoken sincerity that resists easy dismissal. These are not actors. They are children describing what they believe to be real, and that is more frightening than any CGI ghoul.
What elevates It’s Coming is its refusal to pander to believers or skeptics. Mediums, ghost hunters, and faith-based exorcists arrive, each bringing their rituals and equipment. Alexander doesn’t endorse or debunk. The work simply shows. The result is a refreshingly balanced approach that invites viewers to decide for themselves: supernatural torment, psychological trauma, or some uneasy mixture of both.
The documentary isn’t flawless. Its coming does lose momentum, stripped down after the unnerving middle hour. But the core remains: a mother speaking her truth, a family navigating daily life under a cloud of fear, and a director wise enough not to impose answers.
The question of whether the paranormal is “real” becomes secondary. What’s real is the family’s fear more so today when it is not based on supernatural but blatant lies. What’s real is the cultural stigma that makes Ashley hesitate to speak. What’s real is the maternal courage it takes to break her silence when she believes her children are at risk.
That’s why It’s Coming is not trying to convert you into a believer or mock you into a skeptic. It dwells in the uncomfortable middle ground, where certainty falters and human experience take over.
If you’re looking for jump scares or haunted-house theatrics, you’ll likely be disappointed. But if you want a portrait of a family confronting the inexplicable—sometimes chilling, sometimes heartbreaking, always sincere—It’s Coming is worth your time.
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