Awfully bad

Rating: 1/10 (26 October 2017)

First of all, is there anyone out there who is not sick to death of remakes? Seriously. Can you take it? And what excuses do they have for making these remakes? That they can tell the story in a better or more creative way? Has any remake ever accomplished that? Of course not.
This film has no respect for the original, and it doesn't understand (or try to understand) what the film is about. You see, the original film was about friendship, about confronting fear, about the power of faith, and about a really creepy presence menacing the kids. This film just has a silly monster doing silly things, but there is no real purpose to it. The monster doesn't seem to know what it wants, and the kids look like they are just puppets for the monster to abuse. They never become the likable characters from the original, that become true friends and struggle to overcome their weaknesses and fears. Thus, in the remake, all we have is a bunch of kids being scared at random by a CGI monster. The film seems to wish to compensate for lack of substance by turning the violence up. In the original, the fat kid is threatened with a knife, but not actually cut. Here he does get cut, and the rock throwing episode is a real war, with people getting seriously hurt. Likewise, the scenes with 'it' are protracted, yet pointless. You see, the monster in the original film had a clear sense of purpose, and the confrontations with it were not so much about action, but the meaning behind it. This film has no meaning, but it has lots of silly action that really bored me from beginning to end. Another thing is that this film hates to leave anything to imagination. Thus, little Georgie not only gets his arm bit off, but we have to see it in detail, then watch the kid crawl around, without his arm. Again: the film fails to generate sympathy and meaning, and treats us to nothing but gore. Why? Why would anyone make such a nasty film about kids, and even make it a remake of a wonderful film? This is bad film making, the kind that makes you want to throw up. The people who made this have no artistic ambition, and they are utterly cynical.
Ironically, they do reflect the soulless, nihilist age we live in, in which there is no truth or beauty, and nothing to fight and die for. The courage the kids muster at the end of the film won't do them any good in this world, because they will have nothing of any value to fight and sacrifice for. Value no longer exists. Only search for pleasure. And that kills the soul. Just as this film killed everything good about the original.