It definitely floats

Rating: 8/10 (8 September 2017)

This review of IT is spoiler free
**** (4/5)
IT WAS THE year 1986, Benny King's chart topping hit Stand by Me had stepped back into the charts as the film as soon as the film, yet another Stephen King adaptation (adapted from The Body) was released. King had started writing his next novel the seminal 1,136 page novel IT where a small town in Maine has had a spate of child disappearances from a demon called Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Which back in 1990 was adapted into a TV mini series, when the aptly insane British actor Tim Curry played Pennywise in a terrifying, show stopping performance. And after years of waiting King Fanatics are yet again treated to a new adaptation of the novel, from Mama 's director Andy Muschietti. And as the aptly written tagline says it definitely does float.
In reference to Stand By Me within the first five minutes after the introduction of the 'loser club' a bunch of kids who constantly get bullied by kids bigger than them, they communicate with banter, they curse and they pick on each other. Perhaps it's a subtle entry to another King adaptation, but it plays a major part to their story, gradually forming a sense of comedy and heart ship between them. There's drama to their story too, the leader of the group Jaeden Lieberher's 13-year-old Bill suffers a loss, his younger brother. His parents have given up. He is insistent on finding his brother he insists that he's missing somewhere. This emotion affects the other members of the group. As they start to explore the town for any evidence, they start to see Bill SkarsgÃ¥rd's Pennywise haunting their inner fears in confident form.
SkarsgÃ¥rd is terrifying as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, sporting a clown face, the painted smile which goes above his deep red eyes, dressed in white baggy clothes, a catchy voice and laugh to go with it, essentially he's a friendly figure drawing in an audience at a circus. He can shape shift into the kids' inner fears from a dead child, through a narcissistic father to germs which thanks to the effects team look as real as possible. Like Godzilla or the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park Pennywise appears in short yet terrifying spouts, which as the film progresses become scarier than the last. And thanks to SkarsgÃ¥rd's heart stopping performance it doesn't get any better than this. The child actors' performances are incredible too; they deal with drama, with fear and with the emotion that comes with it all in spades way beyond their age group.
How scary is IT? You're probably asking. This seems to depend on your average horror intake threshold. Seemingly oblivious to any trends or the changes to the genre in recent years - Muschietti, seems to go with the straightforward approach to some of the horror tropes, he opts for the jump scares, the fast whipped camera pans zooming into the terrifying faces and finally the Psycho-esque strings banging and striking harshly at elements of the film. Muschietti's approach is slow; he slowly adds these jump scares each more effective than the last striking the kids' fears one take at a time. This all adds up to the film's final approach in the third act, when Pennywise shows himself for the monster he really is. The group has one final fight to get rid of the threat once and for all.
And it all pays off in the end as this is perhaps the best horror film in recent years, it's terrifying, it's spooky and it's darkly entertaining as the new Pennywise may just be the best horror demon EVERÂ…
VERDICT A potent, bold, and terrifying horror story which solidly manages to deal with the collection of scary, hallucinatory, ludicrous, nightmarish images from King's novel. And may just be the best King adaptation in recent years.