not scary at all

Rating: 6/10 (9 September 2017)

I went in to go see IT with full intentions on giving this 8 stars or better. Unfortunately, I found this to be more disappointment then enjoyment. I will explain the good and bad, but first, I want to point out that this review is based solely on the movie itself. By that, I mean that I will not compare this to the 1990 TV movie. I will, however, compare with the book, which is where I did feel a bit let down. I do understand, there is no way you can condense the widths and depths of the book into a 2 hour, 15 minute film. ( This is why it is secretly divided to an unclosed number of films, but I can only base the review on what I saw here.) At first, IT was promising, the first 10 minutes revives the story faithfully to the opening of the book, giving a feel that they are on the right track. Everything seems spot on, and we get a first glimpse of Skargards performance as Pennywise, the child killing clown who dwells in the sewers of Derry, Maine. He is incredibly chilling, and you think to yourself...this will be good! Then you get the opening title screen, provided you have bypassed the most brutal scene in the entire movie. From there, it all falls apart, and I mean...there just seems to be no direction, not much of a plot, the "where do we go from here?" feeling. I did not expect this. We all waited a very long time for this movie to be released in theaters, and I was let down by the feeling that not enough time and effort was put forth in reassuring us that everything would have been handled well and with care. I was let down. Bills performance as Pennywise was quite strong, but he has a (at most) 8 minutes of screening time in the entire 2 hours and 15 minutes of the film. Most of it was a lot of shape shifting, and sometimes he was just doing weird things to try to make us laugh, rather then being scary, so it through me off as to how they were intending on us to react to the movie altogether. This clown can be scary as hell, most will just see him as a weird clown, but it is safe to assume the film does not rely heavily on his performance. The gore? It's not as gory as you may expect, however, when it does happen, it tends to be a bit over the top...one scene in particular, and this is where I resent to say the film falls victim to the whole CGI crap, which downgrades the film quite a bit. I grew up in a time when we didn't use CGI. We did not need it then, and we do not need it now, and it certainly did not belong in IT. How scary was it? If you have seen 10 scary movies in your lifetime, you are prepared for IT. If you have seen 20 scary movies, you will see absolutely nothing new here. Nothing. Familiar jump scares, you should be immune to it. I was. Somewhat. Now...the plot. This is where it all falls apart. There seems to be no direction. The good chunk of the movie revolves around the bully kids fighting with the good kids, and Beverly takes up way too much of the films time. Needless. Parents are barely in the movie. Effortless. I do not know what the plans are for the next film, but I do hope it ties things together. It was a bit emotional, which I liked. A scene, for example, shows a girl signing the cast of one of the kids, she signs it LOSER...Beverly changes the S to an V....so cute. Humor lightens the mood, and the kids did an amazing job putting the film to life. However! There are unforgiving moments. I couldn't forgive the CGI. And it was unfaithful to the book. All in all, it was a fair shot in the making, they had one shot at glory, and if they missed...well, I suppose I can forgive them for that. 6 out of 10 from me!