Has both great and poor aspects

Rating: 7/10 (21 September 2017)

All in all, I enjoyed my time at the cinema watching this film. The excels in characters but unfortunately contains many horror movie tropes.
Full disclosure - I haven't read the book, although I will get around to it.
The characters, as I said, are handled well, and there are a number of characters. Most films that have these many characters become a complete mess and can often lead to very un-compelling films. The film of course, did have something of a head-start since Stephen King was truly the one that wrote and created these characters, however I have to give it to the film for presenting these characters as well as they did and actually make you care about them.
Bill Skarsgard did an incredible job as Pennywise, and was without a doubt my favourite part of the film. However, I think the director should have re watched 'Jaws' before making this film, as Pennywise does get quite a lot of screen time, which can make him less scary at times when the film is trying to be at its most terrifying moments. Despite this, Skarsgard's performance is fantastic.
As for the tropes, jumpscares. Lots and lots and lots and lots of jumpscares, in fact I'd say about 90% of the film's scares come from jumpscares alone, and they become quite forgettable. What's funny is that the film's scariest moments are not the jump scares, which shows that the director knows how to frighten the audience, but decided instead to devote many of the scares to a technique that almost literally any common person on the internet can achieve. As well as this, there are a number of times at which these kids suddenly decide to go full idiot and wander off on their own before being predictably attacked by Pennywise. There is also a massively tropey part towards to end of the film, that I won't spoil, but I've seen so, so, so many times before and it made me laugh when it happened. As well as this, this film re-uses the old 'to overcome our fears, we must face it full on' message which although I think is a good message and is absolutely true, has been used in many horror films before.
The film's direction is OK at best. I can't say I was impressed by the way the director created scenes, in actuality a lot of the film's scenes follow the same exact structure. The editing was good although the film didn't quite flow seamlessly from scene to scene as it probably should have, it's a lot of a scene ending, skipping time and saying 'oh, and then this is what happened next' which wasn't by any means a big distraction but I think it's worth noting.
Overall, I would recommend this film to horror or Stephen King fans, but don't expect 'The Shining', expect something closer to the average modern horror movie.