It

Who knows what combination of content, zeitgeist and promotional onslaught led to it, but it's been hard to avoid It recently, and after I saw the trailer and its nostalgic-drenched eighties mood palette and then saw it was running at 100% on rotten tomatoes based on early reviews, it seemed worth a watch.

So anyway my main thoughts:

• I reckon that It would be pretty comfortably the film with the most jump scares that I've ever seen. Somewhat relatedly, it gives us a very good look at all of its horrors from very early on - not much left to the imagination. Maybe that's why it wasn't actually all that frightening, despite the visceral charge of the (many) scenes where some version of the scary clown judders its way ferociously towards some imperilled child or other.
• Having said that, it certainly puts its cards on the table early, getting a small child into a dark basement basically within the first two minutes and then much worse not too long after that.
• Also, it is long! Well more than two hours.
• The best thing about it is the evocation of that state (of mind) of childhood into adolescence. The comparisons to Stand By Me weren't totally misplaced. The kid actors were all pretty good.
• Its view of adulthood is seriously dark. The film does a good job in having the interactions with parents (and the older teenagers) be actually very disturbing.
• I do think that the way the second 'chapter' turns out will make a big difference to how I (retrospectively) assess the quality of this first one. At certain points, this It started to feel a little bit linearly 'one scene, then the next, then the next', and the interesting themes about fear, innocence and coming of age were only partly explored; an adult return could certainly deepen the treatment of all of those. And it'll be interesting to see what the mood of the 27 years on one is - hopefully a strong contrast to the bright colours and hopefulness of this one.

(w/ Julian)