"A great film trapped in a good film"

Rating: 5/10 (1 April 2018)

I took the liberty to quote Adam from YourMovieSucksDOTorg in the title of the review, because it's exactly what this movie is. A very competent movie with lots of good aspects and potential, but in the end the negatives got in the way of my enjoyment of the flick.
The good
Directing, cinematography and visual effects: the Argentine director Andrés Muschietti, at his second film in his career after the 2013 "Mama", has done a very good job. All I can say is that the movie looks pretty, thanks also to the surprisingly good cinematography of Chung-hoon Chung. Props also to the visual effects department, which created some very eerie and fun to watch visuals.
The acting: nobody stands out, except for Bill Skarsgård. He is incredibly creepy and made a perfect Pennywise. Probably it's an unpopular opinion, but I think he's even better than Tim Curry was at playing the iconic demon. The rest of the cast did a fine job too. Even the children, who are well-known to be the worst part in these kinds of movies, are convincing. There's chemistry between them and it was fun to watch them interact with each other. Also, and this is a very person note, I was so glad to see Finn Wolfhard. I really like him in Stranger Things and I'm just happy his movie career started as well.
As far as I'm concerned, these are the main aspects where the movie excels. There are also plenty of issues, and those really ruined the movie for me. Let's get into that, shall we?
The bad
Clichés: even though the actors did a fine job at portraying their characters, that doesn't mean they were particularly well-written ones. Their backstories were so clichéd, especially the bully type character, whose name I can't even remember. He had no relations to the overarching plot, or at least not one that I could find. I can't fathom why he was so prominently featured. I just didn't care about him.
Finally, the biggest and worst flaw in my opinion of this movie is the overuse of jump scares. They had Skarsgård at his finest, being creepy with just a simple expression. However, they felt compelled to use the trite technique of the jump scare, a very cheap way of scaring people. Using jump scares is not clever; it's the easiest and laziest way to get a scare out of your audience. I hate them! They should've used Skarsgård and his creepines more, istead of relying on this horror trope, because they were nervous people wouldn't get scared enough. Such a pity!
Overall, this movie is a big missed oppurtunity. If they had made a movie similar to It Follows, for example, I think I would've enjoyed it more.
My rating is 5/10.