I think I saw a different IT (2017) to everyone else...

Rating: 2/10 (16 September 2017)

...either that or most people submitting early reviews, off the back of attending the premiere, got carried away with the occasion, because this was truly an absolute toilet of a movie.
Let's start with this. I don't care how popular your history or franchise is. If you require that I do homework first, by either reading a massive book or watching the original film before spending £20 in a cinema in order to understand what the Jeff is going on, then you've immediately failed and made a bad movie. And that is exactly what happened here.
There was absolutely no character introductions, no back story, no descriptive narrative to who the kids in this movie are, who the clown is, what the clown is, why it happens, why anything happens, there was nothing! But nevertheless, the movie immediately expected you to care about the characters. One minute it was like watching a cheap budget teen comedy, then all of a sudden - I say all of a sudden, it was a good 30 minutes before any 'action' happened, suddenly these paranormal day of the dead CGI zombies began crawling out of paintings and killer hair coming out of plug holes! Then 2 minutes later, the kids where cracking on with life like none of this happened... like this is somehow something you forget to mention in conversation with your close friends! It was truly bizarre and genuinely confusing.
Confusion and apathy are the main emotions I felt during this movie. I was so thrown off by how little I cared about the characters, and by how little narrative was given to place context around the events unfolding, that it was impossible to find anything terrifying and scary. I found myself shaking my head in despair at scenes which you could tell the audience should have been in suspense over, but it just wasn't holding up.
Thankfully it wasn't just me either. The cinema was crammed with at least 500 people in the Odeon. You know what people are like especially in public, exaggerating and being eccentric, during IT though... silence. No gasps, no screams, no sighs and humphs... silence, a few people even walked out early.
Visually the movie was a mixed bag. The CGI was certainly impressive, but that left me even more confused. As the clown morphed and deformed itself into alien looking terror, I was sat there thinking just what the Jeff is going on here... someone has clearly put a lot of effort into this CGI but I don't know why, I don't know what this is, is it a human? Is it some sort of ghost? A figment of imagination? There was literally no introduction to describe the history of this clown which was essential for those who simply haven't indulged this franchise before. It was really off putting and distracting.
Secondly, the film is far too dark. Probably to emphasise the horror feel but it was really difficult to see what was happening in many scenes, at times it felt like it was too dark to hide bad props and lazy CGI moments. Either way, one of the most infuriating repetitive annoyances was the characters insistence on carrying torches and pointing them at the damn camera lens!! Oh my god I wanted to brutally dismember them myself for that! Given the the movie is so dark, your eyes adjust to that and then BOOM a blinding bright torch flashes into the lens causing you to squint and look away... again, and again, and again, of course this was happening towards the end which by that point you've already had enough so it was all the more enraging.
So whilst trying to not give out any spoilers, that'll do it. It was up there with the worst films I've ever had to sit through. I honestly can't think of a single positive to this movie. I'm happy to be in the minority on this one too, fans of the franchise I'm sure will love it, people like me who are brand new to this will be left wondering what else they could and should have spent that bloated ticket price on.