The killer klown

Rating: 6/10 (9 June 2018)

Director Andy Muschietti takes inspiration from another Stephen King adaptation, Stand by Me. He has also added a touch of The Goonies. Set in a small town back in the summer of 1989 where some of the kids run away from bigger bullies but the real malevolent force in Pennywise the sinister clown.
The kids discover that disaster strikes every 27 years where children disappear and it is for them to take a stand and stop the clown.
The story is built up slowly, we first see a child playing with a paper boat which goes into the drainage system where he encounters Pennywise and disappears. His brother is traumatised. Most of the early scenes are kids at school, being teenagers, getting bullied. A girl has an abusive father, one child is ill or is he? However the tension soon mounts as Pennywise taunts them, his appearance being increasingly horrific.
We see a lot of the movie titles that came out in 1989 such as one of the Freddy Krueger sequels. Another is Batman, Pennywise as a hint of Jack Nicholson's psychotic Joker.
It has certainly garnered a younger audience with the approach it has taken. My teenage son is not fond of clowns but he was reeled in because we follow these young teenagers and their adventures and trauma.
The film does run for too long, it could had easily knocked 20 minutes off the running time and this affects the pacing of the movie. Some of the CGI looks a bit cheap as well.