What a buildup, what a letdown

Rating: 5/10 (7 December 2017)

Oh man. I read Stephen King's IT a couple years back and was enthralled. It's creepy, funny, disturbing, inappropriate and so much more. To say I built this movie is up is quite the understatement and honestly this is the first negative review I'm writing on here. I feel bad doing it but we all have opinions and I suppose we are entitled to them. That said, IT is not a good movie. There is just something completely off about this film that starts when the movie rolls and it never quite goes away.
First, it's not scary. Yes, I know fear is subjective so maybe you will think it is, but I'm just not sure how. I saw people giving Pennywise Freddy Krueger comparisons before the film was released in the U.S. and I couldn't sit still at work that day. Freddy Krueger?? I went on a Thursday evening, before its technical release in theaters, and boy was I met with a feeling I can't really describe. I felt broken.
First, the movie is choppy. The editing is all over the place and even after reading the book, it's hard to know how a lot of these characters even come together in the film. I can't begin to fathom how difficult it would be to make a novel into a movie. I really can't. Especially this one. But, man, did I have a completely different vision for this film. After reading on the Duffer Brothers and their push for this film (rejected) into their eventual success with Stranger Things, it does now seem that IT as a high-budget television series would be perfect. For starters, there are so many characters and stories essential to IT that didn't make their way into the film. It would be impossible to get them all in there, but as we are currently seeing, a television series (if done correctly) is an excellent way to build characters, story lines and emotions throughout a 10-episode run. IT would have benefited from this medium.
Second, the scares are completely random. The audience sits there as Pennywise scares his victims one-by-one, almost like we are all on a carnival joy ride. Throughout IT, I never felt any sort of connection towards the characters or the town of Derry. I actually thought the creative change to the 80s was the wrong move as well, and it felt like the actors were standing there reading lines in this choppy, strange format. The bullies were cringe-worthy. From the onset, Henry Bowers wants to kill the losers but we don't know why. We aren't shown into anyone's world (except Bev Marsh's) and those are by far the scariest scenes of the entire film. The casting of Mike and Stan is also very bad and it all just seems so cheesy and fake. I wasn't a huge fan of Bill in the movie either, honestly. Then, when some key creative changes are made from the source material later in the movie, that was about it for me. The creative differences were just too much and I saw this film playing out in a completely different light.
It's tough for me to give a negative review of something because I know just how hard these people work to make a film and to create their art. I kept getting a Jim Carrey Grinch vibe from Pennywise throughout the film and I saw the evil entity more as a demon when reading the novel, and less as a stereotypical monster as this movie makes him out to be. I never got that feeling of dread I felt reading the novel and I definitely didn't get a sense of evil in the town of Derry. I'll be passing on Part 2, unfortunately.