You'll float too...

Rating: 9/10 (17 September 2017)

This film had very high expectations from most people going in given it's excellent marketing campaign. It's crazy to think that it's first trailer is the most viewed trailer of all time within twenty- four hours beating the likes of huge franchise movies like "Star Wars" and "Transformers". However, it just goes to show how popular Stephen King's novel "It" and the property as a whole really is. People really like being scared by clowns for some reason. Anyway, I'm glad to say that this film not only met my expectations but wildly exceeded them.
The movie just like the novel follows the seven teenagers of the self-proclaimed "Loser's club" in the seemingly timid town of Derry, Maine as they are terrorized by an entity simply called "It". This entity takes the form of your worst fears but usually appears as a 'Pennywise the dancing clown' to lure children in before essentially brutally devouring them. Each of the kids at some point are confronted by "It" as he torments them with his shape-shifting abilities. But with all their courage and teamwork they must overcome their fears in order to rid the town of "It".
A really interesting thing about the story and each of the character's respective arcs is that it's not just the entity that causes them problems that they must learn to deal with. Instead most of the characters have very tangible conflicts. For example, Bill must deal with the loss of his younger brother, Eddie has an overbearing Mother which makes him a hypochondriac, Beverly has an abusive Father and they all deal with viscous bullying at the hands of the "Bowers gang". All of this realism gives the film a cerebral feel which is then complimented by the supernatural terror provided by "It".
The reason this film works so well is because it nails down three- dimensional characters in a human story about childhood, fear, courage and friendship. The writing, directing and acting are all to thank for that. The director Andy Muschietti and the writers including Cary Fukunaga clearly understood the essence of the novel and what they needed to keep and remove to keep the film's pace steady.
The cast of mostly unknowns is superb with the standouts for me being Finn Wolfhard as Ritchie who was hilarious, Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie who was also funny but really gave his character innocence and vulnerability too and Jaeden Lieberher who gave a nuanced performance as the leader of the "Loser's club", Bill.
Bill Skarsgards gives a delightfully creepy turn as Pennywise which heightens the tension of any scenes he appears in. If I had to pick one gripe with this film it's that some of the main characters such as Stanley and Mike are not really developed as well as the others but hopefully this will be rectified in part two when they are adults.
But other than, all in all, this is a great adaptation of one of Stephen King's greatest and most popular novels and I can't wait for part two.