Nearly perfect with minor drawbacks

Rating: 8/10 (21 October 2017)

As a big Stephen King fan who knows that his books are often poorly represented on the screen, I was pleasantly surprised by this film.
It wasn't perfect - they could have included more source material in the film, but the child actors nailed their roles. There's a few moments where you might think "My god, Richie ruining another serious scene with his wisecracks, why did they write so many childish jokes into dramatic scenes?", but that's how Richie acted in the books as well.
Bill Skarsgard did an excellent job as Pennywise - it was sort of obvious that Skarsgard drew influence from Heath Ledger's Joker, more than Tim Curry's Pennywise. Skarsgard's mannerisms and way of speaking as Pennywise, was very much Heath Ledger as the Joker - not identical, as Skarsgard had his own unique performance, but the influence was certainly palpable.
The movie itself wasn't very scary - there were a few creepy scenes and minor jump-scares, but it wasn't as terrifying as The Conjuring films, for example. But that's okay, because my biggest fear for this film was that they would turn it into a horror-movie about a scary clown. And they almost did that, disappointingly, but they didn't make the entire movie revolve around this killer-clown eating little children. They did manage to capture the childhood fears and isolation the children felt from the adults of Derry, that was more prominent in the books.
Overall, its a good film - if you've read the book, don't expect too much. They changed a lot of the source material while keeping the most important parts. But its enjoyable enough.