A clichÃ©-ridden torture of a movie

Rating: 4/10 (7 September 2017)

Warning: Personal opinion ahead. If you love this movie, good for you.
I'm not sure if I was in a bad mood, or if I had too high of an expectation, but I utterly despised this movie.
I should get this out of the way - I have not read the book, but even if I have, I would judge this movie purely on its own. Doesn't matter if it stuck closely to the source. Books and movies are very different medium. Hence, a carbon copy of the book doesn't guarantee a good movie.
Credits where credits are due, the cinematography and production design were pretty impressive. The kids' performances were great too. Aside from those things though, I couldn't find much to praise about this movie. And the few good things about this movie were not nearly enough to save it.
Also, there are far too many characters for us to get attached to in such a short amount of time. As a result, we don't care much about any of them. And for the same reason, any kind of character development felt unnatural and sudden. I'm aware of the moments of character development, but the movie's quick pacing doesn't allow the emotions of these moments to sink in. Instead, the movie opted for an overly obvious score that forced its audience to feel these emotions. As a human being, I'd much rather be able to feel these emotions myself, rather than being told to feel them.
While I'm on the soundtrack, I can say the same for the "horror" portion of this movie. I had hoped this movie would scare us with an eerie and haunting atmosphere. Disappointingly, whenever a moment felt remotely eerie, it was interrupted by an annoyingly obvious soundtrack and a cheap jump scare that's as satisfying as finding out there will be a sequel to this movie. Many moments could have been excellent if there was no score at all, or if it was more subtle. Apart from the soundtrack, the sound effects were also very distracting. I understand that sound effects can help make the clown and other monsters feel more terrifying. But, I think it's just cheap and lazy to add low-pitched swooshing sound when we were first introduced to Beverly's father. Might as well turn it into a Kung-Fu movie while they were at it!
Generally, I thought it was filled with clichÃ©s and cringe-worthy moments - things like the fat kid looking up crucial information in the library, the kids repeatedly splitting up after stressing the importance of staying together, the "we don't fear you, you're the one who should fear us" moment, the general lack of common sense we expect from horror movie characters, and beloved jump scares. Normally, in movies like these, we'd have to suspend disbelief, but in this movie, you'd have to suspend insanity. I find it very unlikely that some kids were capable of taking on a monster clown, if it was truly as powerful as we were told.
Did I mention how cheesy the movie felt whenever the clown or other monsters came on screen, or how the action scenes were over-cut? If I thought the clown was terrifying, it was because of how painfully cheesy it was, and the immense agony I felt witnessing said cheesiness. If they cut out all action scenes, scenes with monsters, and scenes with the clown, and leave only the human scenes in the movie, we would have a movie that's at the very least good. Of course, it wouldn't be "It" then.
There are a lot of simple and easily fixable issues that makes me angry about this movie. For instance, there was a scene when the kids were checking out their town's old map with a projector, before the clown started appearing on the image and climbed out of it. The projector's light coming on and off was a pretty interesting effect. Unfortunately, instead of holding each shot for a few seconds longer, creating a cool disorienting effect, the movie decided to cut it like a movie trailer, which was painful to watch!
Then there was the final battle. I'd have given this movie an 8 or a 9 if the kids actually left Bill behind. Instead, one of them, whose name I can't recall, pretended he was really going to leave him, right before he picked up a baseball bat and hit the clown with it. And of course, the clown did not see that coming, because a supernatural, omniscient being like him is clueless when it comes to movie clichÃ©s. And guess what this scene reminded me of? It made me think of Suicide Squad's ending, which I believe was not intentional. Honestly though, I'm still angry that they all survive. This is as infuriating as seeing the human protagonists in Transformers 5 repeatedly surviving decidedly lethal falls.
Don't even mention the ending scene. It would have been moving to see them hold hands in a circle if the movie gave us any reason to care so deeply about them. And moving it was, as it provided me a lot of motivation to write this review.
This movie was 2 hours and 15 minutes long, but it felt like 3 hours long. I could be remembering something wrong because I had given up on the movie after the first hour. At that point, I was only enduring whatever insanity the movie decided to throw at us, and I stopped caring. The moment when the movie was trying to set up a sequel, was among the many moments when I visibly face-palmed and shook my head. I really thought this could have been a great movie. But its execution left something to be desired. Or, you can go watch Stranger Things instead.