A breath of fresh air

Rating: 8/10 (21 September 2019)

IT is the first of a two-part modern reworking of the Stephen King classic, first adapted for the screen with the miniseries back in 1990. I like the miniseries a lot, and Tim Curry's interpretation of Pennywise remains definitive, but the 2017 IT is surprisingly decent. It has a far more adult edge than the miniseries, and it's much, much darker. It seems to capture the dark heart of the King novel very well, the very essence of it, while the real asset lies in the all-child cast; the performances are generally excellent, going for realism over sympathy or sentiment and feeling very true to life as a result. The scares are well telegraphed and perhaps a little too inevitably reliant on CGI trickery, but for a modern horror they're quite effective. I didn't mind the updating to the 1980s setting either as it makes sense to follow King's trend of setting the past scenes 27 years before the present day. Despite the flaws I found this to be one of the stronger horror films to come from Hollywood in recent years; there's something pleasingly old-fashioned about a film that emphasis strong plotting rather than a series of jumps or chases descending into tedium.