Faithful to the Novel

Rating: 8/10 (11 September 2017)

While not the best picture based on a novel by perennial bestselling author Stephen King—that distinction would probably be held by 1994's "The Shawshank Redemption"—"It" is probably the most comprehensive.
At a whopping 1138 pages, Stephen King's novel "It" reads like an encyclopedia of not only horror, but also horror movies and rock 'n roll music. Iconic movie monsters from Frankenstein to the Creature from the Black Lagoon make brief guest appearances in the book, and a bibliography of musical selections quoted in the novel takes up two full pages at the end, as sort of required listening.
While the new motion picture version is not quite as detailed as the book—to accomplish that, "It" would need to have a running time numbering in days instead of hours—the picture does certainly have an epic feel, with the movie's seven or eight major set-pieces based solidly, accurately, and even lovingly upon the events described by King in his novel...although mercifully the metaphysical aspects of the tale are eliminated.
Although the filmmakers nominally set the film in the late 1980s instead of the late 1950s era specified in the novel, in essence the movie exists in sort of a generic time-frame which might almost be any era from the 1930s forward, to the present day. The only actual visible milestone in the picture is the advertising of "Batman" and "Lethal Weapon" at the local Bijou—presumably as a sort of in-joke, since both pictures were also Warner Bros. releases.
Briefly, in "It" a group of seven children identify in an otherworldly, malignant, psychotic clown the living source of all worldly evil, and seek to destroy itparticularly after the younger sibling of one of the children becomes one of its victims, and the children deduce that the monstrous clown feeds not only on fear, but also on actual human lives, especially those of the young.
The scares keep coming in "It" at such a pace that the audience has little chance to catch its breath, let alone collect its thoughts. Although the picture does not contain as many sucker punches or low blows as, say, 1973's "The Exorcist"—another Warner Bros. release, by the way, based on a bestselling novel—"It" plays not only on the audience's fear but also on certain paranoias and even a handful of phobias.
The images depicted in the movie run the gamut from the mildly disturbing to the genuinely shocking to the jaw-droppingly horrific. This might be the rare movie which is rated R for its fright ratio, although the violence and bloodshed are present in abundance—in one scene a geyser of blood erupts from a bathroom drain.
Adapted from King's novel by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman, and directed by Andy Muschietti, the movie benefits enormously from the casting of the children. The seven young actors appearing as the group of friends in the movie are a remarkably talented and persuasive group of children, with young Jeremy Ray Taylor and Sophia Lillis contributing particularly vivid characterizations as an overweight outcast and the supposedly "loose" girl from the wrong side of the town's tracks, respectively.
Also an asset to "It" is the casting of young Finn Wolfhard as the most sarcastic and irreverent member of the seven. Already familiar to many viewers from his role on television's "Stranger Things," Wolfhard with his constant flow of cynical wisecracks provides a nice counterpoint—possibly even an emotionally-necessary one—to the movie's seemingly inexhaustible supply of horrific images and scenarios. Actor Bill Murray performed much the same function in 1984's "Ghostbusters."
Although self-contained as a stand-alone feature, a title superimposed on screen at the very end of the picture designates "It" as chapter one of a larger story. Readers of the novel are already aware that the group of children must reunite as grownups to again battle the clown monster—indeed, even in this picture the children recognize that the evil returns to their town in twenty-seven-year cycles.
Still apparently undecided is the number of sequels which will be necessary to complete the story, but educated guesswork suggests more than one—"It" has earned gross receipts exceeding $179 million in the first four days of international release, and at the present time exhibits no trend toward slowing its rate of commerce. Hollywood rarely turns its back on a moneymaker prior to exhausting the supply of financial resources. There's already talk of a continuing television franchise.
Needless to say, "It" is not for very young children, or even sensitive adults. And for viewers troubled with coulrophobia—the irrational, paralyzing fear of clowns—"It" additionally presents an enormously satisfying opportunity to whisper to the world, "I told you so."