Review of It (2017) by Juliiouse — 09 Sep 2017

Although there was a lot to like about It from the minute-to-minute, the overall experience was let down by trying to do too much with the two and a half hours the film ran for. As a story, It has three main threads: the first (and most advertised) is the horror aspect; following that is mystery, and then coming of age. Whilst each of these areas are visited in the film, none of them are really given enough time to breathe and can come across as either rushed or half-baked, leading to an incomplete experience. The main draw for audiences for the film would be the horror and mystery aspects, but much of the screen time is dedicated to the coming of age story, which often feels disjointed to the rest of the film. These moments feel a little too light and comedic given the subject matter. I occasionally felt as though each part was written separately and put together at the end, as characters would suffer from extremely traumatic experiences and then not bring them up when they were with their friends the next day. I thought that this may be down to It messing with their memory, but it is never made clear and can feel a little weird. Possibly the strangest example of this is a light hearted cleaning montage of a bathroom which-- the scene before-- had been the stage of one of the most distressing moments in the story.

The horror aspects of the film all felt a little rushed and lacking in tension. Each follows a strict formula: the manifestation of a character's fear appears, there's a close up of said scary thing, then it runs at the character who promptly escapes. The first few times this happened put me on edge a little bit, but by the fourth time, they came across as a weak attempt at dark humour rather than being legitimately scary. No time is really given for tension to build up for the horror, which is absolutely crucial in the same way a good joke needs time to build up to a punchline. I wasn't too sure what to expect coming into the film, but it was sold to me as a friend as being the story of a community slowly being controlled and overwhelmed by a force of pure evil. There was no build up in atmosphere or darkening of the world to show this. The horror moments just happened, ended, and the plot rumbled on. A good contrast to this would be Paranormal Activity, The Shining or Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, in which the malevolent forces' build up in power is felt everywhere and becomes almost oppressive, building up to a brutal crescendo at the end. There was none of this here: the final raid on It's lair felt like some bored kids trying to pass the time rather than a necessary act to end evil's hold on a small town. The mystery of It's nature is alluded to but never really looked at. One of the kid's does some investigation and unsettling pictures from the past are shown, which worked very well and pulled me in, but this was quickly shelved and didn't really go anywhere. Overall, I feel that two things could have been done to improve the film: the first would be to tell more stories through subtext and the second would be to make it a miniseries in order to free up more hours to dedicate to plot threads. Some better editing and use of subtexts would really free up time that could have been spent exploring the nature of It and to allow horror elements to breathe. Around an hour is spent establishing that each character is a social outcast and that they are being bullied; this could have been shortened to a few minutes with a montage of them being bullied or even just establishing them as a group that already know each other and have them being chased by the bullies in their car. The whole plot with the bullies doesn't really go anywhere either. We see one being possessed but that ends without really building tension or threatening the group past a small power struggle. This may sound overly negative, but it's mainly borne of disappointment rather that disdain. The sense of setting and world-building were top notch, and some of the characterisation worked really well. I don't thing the film has sold me to watch the second chapter when it releases next year, but I have already picked up the novel it was adapted from and I am eager to start reading it.