A creepy and well-made Horror

Rating: 7/10 (7 September 2017)

No doubt about, Mama director Andy Muschietti's newest incarnation of Stephen King's well regarded source material and the 1990 mini-series It, is going to be a huge success.
Capturing that currently in-vogue 1980's vibe of nostaglia and the equally popular ragtag kids on adventures plot lines, Muschietti's profientially made and polished production is arguably 2017's best mainstream horror event and a potential new franchise starter.
Kicking things off with what's easily one of recent memories best opening sequences, It certainly seems set to be a confronting and horrific experience and while it is in many sequences and aspects (this is a film that earns its mature rating and is very far from being a kid friendly horror), It is also not a hide your head behind a pillow type horror, as it focuses a large portion of its time on setting up the Losers Club as the stories main focus.
Led by Jaeden Lieberher's stutturing Bill, who is still grieving the disappearance of his little brother Georgie, the Club is a band of high school misfits who decide that they'll take matters into their own hands and unearth the evil that hides in their small town of Derry, after a spat of children have mysteriously vanished and a nefarious history of past tragedies is unearthed.
The group dynamic of the Club doesn't always fly and not every eccentric member of the gang are appealing but a lot of the heart and soul of this group rings true with Jeremy Taylor's kindhearted Ben and Sophia Lillis misunderstood Beverley Marsh particular highlights, while Ben's incredible ability to stick to his task despite various slashings also worthy of note; Wolverine himself would have a hard time slashing Ben down!
With the club winning and losing their screen time in equal measure, Muschietti's biggest win is Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise the Clown aka a Coulrophobic's least desired creation.
For anyone who still has nightmares about Tim Curry's crazy demon clown, this freshly minted Pennywise will be the stuff of true torment, as while you wouldn't call this It a truly scary or even overly frightening experienece, whenever Skarsgard is on screen the film goes up a notch or two, even if certain scare tactics and scenarios are overused by Muschietti as the film's overlong narrative and especially long in the tooth finale kicks in, that gets saddled with an additonal unneeded evil teenager sideplot that really has no need being here.
Final Say –
It would've been great to have gotten to see original director Cary Fukunaga's version of this film but crawling out of the sewer at just the right time, there's a lot of hype and noise about It and while Muschietti's film isn't anything truly special, this is one of the more solid bigscreen King adaptation's and a likely series kickstarter, that while not floating to great heights, proves not all remakes are bad ideas.
3 1/2 rock wars out of 5