Don't Believe the Hype

Rating: 4/10 (18 November 2017)

I spent over 5 hours today with It. I re-watched the original mini-series and then this movie, so of course I'm going to make comparisons between the two. I had read many reviews of this film heralding it as the next great horror movie, surpassing many box office records, and even putting the genre back into Oscar contention. After viewing the film, I can't say I see where any of this hype comes from.
First off, the kids in the 1990 mini-series had much better on screen chemistry then the kids in this version. The mini-series did a much better job of giving them a back story, and really portrayed them as having a relationship in which they genuinely cared for each other. In this version, we have the kid from Stranger Things (Finn Wolfhard - Richie) relentlessly making "your mom" jokes until the other cast members haphazardly stumble into the plot, and end up joining up with the Loser Crew for some very benign reasons.
Secondly, this film added a whole bunch of unnecessary horror tropes into the story that, in my opinion, did nothing but take away from the horror aspect. Beverly's bathroom scene for instance gained nothing from the added blood and gore. If anything, it made it less believable, as in the mini-series she is able to clean the blood herself, but in this movie there is a cleaning montage with six characters cleaning a blood soaked room while under a tight time line before her father returns home.
The jerky villain motions are also something that has been overdone, and they feel out of place for a story that is supposed to be set in the 80's. Ditto the wide-mouthed toothy grin that Pennywise has; the shoehorning in of the "haunted house," in a story that's supposed to be centered around a sewer system, and the scene where a victim gets dragged out of frame accompanied by a high pitched scream. All in all, these things were too clichéd to make the movie scary.
Third, it felt like the characters were neutered versions of their book/mini-series counterparts. Mike's character in this version seemed like almost an afterthought, while he was intended to be one of the central characters, arguably even the main character of the original story. The bullies also lost their backstories, and end up essentially being token bad guys for no reason, even though they had fully fleshed out backstories in the novel.
I understand that no visual representation will be able to capture all of the nuance of the novel, but this version seemed to come up glaringly short- especially considering the review scores it got.
All in all, I think this remake would have been better off being a multi part mini-series, as was the original intention. While I completely understand that they intend to make a Part 2 centered around the adult's story, two hours is not nearly enough to express the detail and emotion that this half of the story required.