A family live a secluded but safe existence while an unspecified threat terrorises the world, until a couple with a young son appear and ask for their help. Cue everything going to hell in a depressing apocalyptic hand-basket.

I hadn’t seen the trailer or read the blurb going in to this film so I was, rather optimistically, expecting an atmospheric horror movie with some nasty psycho-monster attacking people at night (clearly I was watching totally the wrong film with IT in the title). I was also encouraged by the presence of Joel Edgerton who was so impressive in 2015 movie ‘The Gift’. My hopes were dashed pretty much instantly however with the appearance of this chap:

It came at night and got this guy good.

Oh great, another world-ending virus movie then. Bugger. Because if there’s one thing we all know about world-ending viruses – it’s that they make people puke blood. Great.

In actual fact there isn’t a massive amount of blood-spewing present here which would be good news if it weren’t for the unfortunate fact that there isn’t much of a story here either. The ‘It’ mentioned in the title is never really explained (what is It, why does It come at night? Why am I watching It rather than IT?) and the story focuses on paranoia and mistrust instead. Not a bad idea but other movies have done it better. Edgerton does a decent job of making you feel for the main character but he doesn’t get a lot to do, apart from glower, wave firearms about and murder old people.

It’s night, so it’s coming. What is it? Fucked if I know.

On the whole I wouldn’t recommend this movie either to horror fans or to emetophobes. Not enough horror for the former and too much upchucking for the latter. Also as a side note, not related to sick, let the above picture serve as a warning to animal lovers. There is a dog in this movie, and we all know how that ends. Probably best not to watch.

Film Score: 5/10

NB OCD: 5/10