Not that scary, and at times pretty boring

Rating: 6/10 (16 September 2017)

Well. I'm not sure why some reviewers praise this film like a masterpiece, because it clearly isn't. Horror films i consider to be great or masterpieces are Alien, The Exorcist, The Orphanage, The Shining, The Thing and so on. There are many great horror films, this is not one of them.
To begin with, the movie isn't that scary. It relies on jump scare tactics from start to finish. Squeaking doors, strobe lights, music goes silent right before the scare, camera pans around to reveal something out of frame and so on. It uses all the tricks in the book, but so did movies like Alien. What sets good horror films from the others, is the story.
I have not read the book, but since it has sold over a hundred million, I'm guessing it was pretty scary, and had a very good story. So where did this film go wrong? And what did it do right? To begin with, i would like to state that i did see the IT mini series in the early 90's, but i could not remember much of it. So i did not remember exactly what Pennywise was, and what exactly he could do. All i knew is that he is a clown that takes on the form of the victims deepest fears, to break them down, so he can eat them. That's about it. And that he prefers to eat children.
So pretty damn nasty and scary stuff there. That is why it surprises me how unscary this film was. The movie starts off pretty good, the first 10-20 minutes or so looks very promising, but after that, the movie starts to get boring. The horrible stuff happening feels trivial, and does not hit the nerve it's intended to. This can be caused by many things, and it's probably a combination of mediocre acting, directing, editing, screenplay or a combination of all of those.
After the movie was done i was left really unsatisfied and curious. So i read about pennywise when i got home, i read what the novel says about him, what he is, where he comes from, how he can do what he does. You see, the movie completely fails at this, it does not tell anything about pennywise. And that seem to have been a huge mistake.
In Alien, at least they show us the life cycle of the alien. We see where it was found, how it was inserted into the person, how it looked like when it burst out, and how fast it grew to full size, and then how incredibly dangerous it was. Then we were trapped inside a space ship with it, knowing what he was capable of, and that the crew basically were screwed. With the original script, the good acting, the awesome direction and the brilliant set pieces, Alien became a masterpiece.
You don't always need to know a characters back story, many horror films works because the lesser you know, the more scary it is. But this does not seem to be the case with IT.
In this movie i always had this feeling the kids never were in any real danger from Pennywise. So the last hour of the film or so was really boring at times. It is one scene after the other with the clown and the kids, and it never had any suspense. What created suspense was characters like Beverly's father, those scenes and some others actually saves this film from becoming a total drag.
The movie is indeed beautifully shot, and it has some great sound effects, and Bill Skarsgård is pretty good as Pennywise, just not that scary. I'm not sure if it's his fault, or the direction or the script. but I'm leaning on the director and the script, because Bill could have been really scary, if only i wasn't so damn sure those kids were always gonna be safe.
This was the reason Hitchcock bought every single book of Psycho before he made the film. He didn't want the audience to know the plot or the ending, because if they knew, the film would have had absolutely no suspense. This might be it, it can be that simple.
But in that case, if this movie has no suspense for anyone who have seen the TV series or read the book, well then it is a fail. It should have delivered something that was shocking and surprising, something unexpected and also more original, spent less time on jump scare tactics, and come up with a more effective way of telling the story. I can not put my finger on exactly what this movie was lacking, but it sure wasn't that scary.
It's a 2 hour buildup to a boss fight that ends exactly how you expect.
6/10 - Fair