Best King Horror Adaptation

Rating: 9/10 (15 September 2017)

What is It? Well, It is the best Stephen King horror adaptation since Kubrick's over-indulgent The Shining, and It surpasses The Shining on so many levels. We come to the town of Derry, Maine, a town that has six-times the national average of missing people and murders. That has a huge skewing once every 27 years when It stalks food for hibernation. That is according to Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), Derry's newest pre-teen denizen. He shares this information with some other kids like Bill (Jaeden Lierbeher), Richie (Finn Wolfhard), Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), Mike (Chosen Jacobs), Stanley (Wyatt Oleff), and Beverly (Sophia Willis). They are, in fact, the Losers Club because of their age (middle school) and tics. Bill stutters, Eddie is smothered with a hypochondriac mother, and Mike who only has the sin of being black in a very white-bred town. They are all having visions of Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgard). He tricks them with illusions to create ghastly fear, and he operates from the sewers of the city to get his prey. In fact, one of his recent victims was Bill's little brother, Georgie. Of course, this motion picture only reflects the first half of King's classic novel. A sequel will reveal the second half in which the afore-mentioned come back together as adults to confront It again. If this one is any indication of the sequel, audiences will wait with heavy anticipation. It has a great screenplay penned by Chase Palmer, Careu Fkuanga, and Gary Dauberman that respects the source material and adapts it well to modern times. Even better is the direction offered by Andy Muschietti. I will add kudos to cinematography and editing of Choon-tuk Chung and Jason Pallantin, respectively. All these elements blend for a perfect recipe of horror and suspense. Jump scares are plenty without being triggered by the gotcha tropes of dogs, cats, and friends around the corner. The scares are for the monsters, visions, and disturbing images. The suspense is geared up with unpredictability. What will happen? How will these kids stop It? Even more troublesome is the evil perpetrated by real humans. The adult figures are often the absent, abusive, and overbearing parents, and the vicious bullies in town. What really makes this one work, though, are the believable, earnest performances of the young kids. We can identify with them as the ones being picked on for being fat, bookish and nerdy, or for stuttering. Even these children have differences between themselves. The 1990 TV mini-series has nothing on this one as it is raised to a level of reality without the camp or cheesy early 1990's special effects. Now to hope the sequel will live up to the success of the current installment and live up to expectations.