Too many jump-scares kill the jump-scare

Rating: 5/10 (25 September 2017)

Well, watching this movie reminded me of two things: - first, I will never ever go again to the movie theater to watch a horror/thriller movie. The crowd is generally bad (I agree it may depend on the location), very noisy and ruins entirely the experience. Word of advice: if you want to experience immersive fear, stay home and watch it there. - second, new does not mean better. The movie is almost entirely composed of jump-scares, some more efficient than others. The heavily creepy atmosphere from the old 1990 movie and from the books has sadly been obliterated to favor cheap thrills every minute; the annoying and omnipresent jokes of the kids kill all attempts to set up a dark and oppressing environment. With the presence of Richie (Finn Wolfhard), we get the "Stranger Things" feeling of kids versus the unknown and the movie is precisely that: a kid movie versus an evil villain. Not a horror movie with an unspoken and unnamed abomination that feeds of your fear, eat children, get into your nightmares and is virtually immortal.
From the second half of the movie, no one on screen is really scared and I heard move laughter in the theater than I heard screams. SPOILER: the final scene with the kiss achieve to ruin everything: it is not needed, bring an element of romance that breaks even further the horror part of the movie. Also, FYI: in the books, to get out of the sewers, Beverly has sex with all the other boys for them to overcome their fears and find their way out (yes, it is really written in the books). This is obviously difficult to broadcast that but still: we are far away from the kiss to the hero last scene (I honestly do not remember if that kiss is written in the books but still, of all passages to keep, this one could have been replaced easily).
The very clown does not stand the comparison with the old one. It looks evil all right but precisely the fear from the clown comes from the fact that it looks initially normal, not Satan's spawn at first sight. I missed the utterly, profoundly disturbing feeling of the original.
In a nutshell, I would not say it was a boring movie but definitely not the best I have seen, definitely not up to the old movie and to the books.