IT - Spoiler Free Review

Rating: 5/10 (14 September 2018)

The story of IT has always been just as much about a group of youths discovering the value of friendship, while overcoming their own personal childhood traumas as it was about a killer clown eating kids, and the first thing this movie pulls off perfectly: the child actors in this movie are great, they all have a strong on-screen presence, strong chemistry with each other and most importantly, you feel for them on their journey; the everyday traumas they are dealing with is something most of us can relate to in one way or another...and then there's the clown, the horror, the reason people have been too scared to watch this film: EVERY TIME that damn clown shows up on screen, this movie turns into an episode of Goosebumps, and I'm not kidding, that's how not scary this new version is. The original movie managed to scare an entire generation; you can ask basically any child (except me) that grew up in the 90s and they will tell you about some trauma caused by the original IT, and to an extent, I do get it. Tim Curry took the character of Pennywise and made it something memorable, on the surface he still looked like a normal clown, the design was simplistic which made it identifiable and thereby sparked a genuine fear of clowns; I can tell you now, no-one is going to remember Bill Skarsg책rd the damn dancing clown, why? Because it is just trying way too hard to be scary, the design looks unnatural, his voice sounds like a pedophile and his actions are all overdone...if you see this clown on the street, you're going to run away and that completely defies why Pennywise worked in the original movie. Overall, this movie works as a drama, it has the same strengths as earlier Stephen King classics like 'Stand by Me', but falls apart every single time it tries to be scary; so even though I would love to give this movie a pass on what it did right, I simply can't recommend a horror that only works when the horror isn't happening. Disappointing movie and yet another nail in the coffin of the Stephen King cinematic universe, that is never going to take off. Scariest thing in this movie...in a few years I'm going to have to sit through Part 2.