I think I read Stephen King’s IT twenty years ago or so. It’s probably in the top three of his most well known novels. It’s a massive and weird book and the TV mini-series (1990) did it’s best to adapt the tome. So twenty seven years later Pennywise is given another crack at turning Derry, Maine into an all you can ear buffet.

In 1988, a lot of kids start disappearing in the small town of Derry. On of those kids is Georgie, little brother of Bill Denbrough. He was last seen next to a storm drain during a big rain storm. His body is never found leaving the Denbrough’s with a lot of questions. Bill thinks he could have been swept into the storm drain but no one will listen to him. When his friends help him try to find Georgia in the summer of ’89, the rag tag group of kids discover that a shape shifting monster lives under their home town.

Some (wise) choices have been made with this take, moving the story from the 50s to the 80s being the most obvious. I don’t remember all the details but watching this brought up a lot of memories so I think the movie is succesfull in hitting all the most important parts of the book. It focuses soley on The Losers Club when they’re kids, there’s no time jumping to adulthood. That keeps the direction of the story clean and straight forward.

The casting of IT is absolutley perfect. In a movie that is 99% kids, the whole film rides on the finding the right actors. All seven of The Losers is spot on. They’re believable, they act the hell out of every scene. They all have a legit chemistry with each other so that makes their friendship on screen come across as geniune. Friendship is what the movie is about so that’s insanely important for this project to work. Right down to the small moments, like when they are shooting quick insults at each other (Richie and Eddie are hilarous) are really endearing. The joy, sadness, and fear that the kids get whipped through feels real. Jackson Scott, the kid who plays Georgie, is adorable. He’s the quintecential little brother and when IT pulls him into the sewer as he sceams for his big brother’s help is absolutley heart breaking.

So is IT scary? A shape shifting monster is something to behold, but it depends. If you are scared of clowns, yeah. It’s nuts. Otherwise, not really. They got me once in the garage scene. There’s some really wild imagery and great set ups. Pennywise in the sewer talking to Georgie is riveting. It’s brilliantly shot (as is much of the movie) and Bill Skarsgard’s choice of voice is fantastic. It’s this childish…meanace that’s hard to forget. Pennywise looks striking so the voice completes the movie monster. A big reason why I liked this was because it’s very Nightmare on Elm Street. Pennywise knows it’s victims fears and it dredges them up in fantastic and horrible ways. The creativity for when IT goes after each kid is awesome. I found the problem to be that (much like the NOES remake) the filmmakers relied on the same scare tactic too much. Pennywise feeds on fear and they make it very clear that IT loves scaring people. Probably more than actually eating them. There’s this glee to it that’s a great monster character trait but it gets undercut by the constant bum rushing IT does. I think in every scene Pennywise is in, they had Skarsgard do the “shake your head while you run and we’ll speed it up in post” thing. That’s effective two or three times until it gets routine and dumb.

That grip asise, I thought IT was a ton of fun. Really looking forward to Chapter Two.