Struggling to find much enthusiasm.

Rating: 4/10 (18 September 2017)

I was quite looking forward to seeing IT after noticing how very highly it's been rated on IMDb and RT, but watching it objectively as someone who is not familiar with the original or the Stephen King novel I can only assume the movie is enjoying a honeymoon period with fans of the franchise and others are getting swept up with the hype.
The movie is safely buckled into the "Goonies/E.T nostalgia aesthetic" bandwagon and feels almost exactly like the popular TV series Stranger Things. The interactions between the cast are generally amusing, but again... it feels like it's jacking it's style from elsewhere.
The horror elements are poorly done, the scares are 100% predictable every time (except one - Beverly's abduction caught me a little off guard). The clown is not a scary character, the various other forms it takes are not scary - just amorphous blobs of 2007 video game level CGI wobbling around with voices pitched down an octave.
The backstory is so, so weak.... there's just a shapeshifting animal that eats people, preferably scared children, living down a well. Presumably evidence of it's shenanigans can only be seen by children, but how "it" got there, or where it came from, or why adults don't seem to notice the huge number of disappearances, among other glaring gaps in the story I am expected to just accept. The information we are given on a plate during the "research" scenes is presented in a cheesy and patronising way.
The romantic dynamic between Bill, Beverly and Ben was laughably confused and thin, and not in a believable teenagery way.
The bully characters were unbelievably cartoonish and plain unbelievable.
Mike as a character enjoyed absolutely no development or backstory at all, I hate to say it but he was the definition of a "token black guy".
IT is the kind of film I expect to see on iTunes for 99p in a few years.