A heart-pounding, white-knuckle horror extravaganza

Rating: 10/10 (9 September 2017)

Thoughts on It: One of my top 10 horror films of all time. I went into the theater with high expectations, and my expectations were more than satisfied. This one blows the silly 1990 version out of the water. If you're looking for safe, sanitized, watered down made-for-TV stuff, look elsewhere.
Perhaps most impressive of all was how much story they were able to pack into just 2 hours and fifteen minutes. It didn't feel like they were cutting any corners or needlessly jettisoning content to keep the length reasonable. There was enough story to fill a 4 hour movie, but this one never felt over-saturated. The pacing was excellent.
Is it faithful to the book? Yes and no. It's substantially different - and I mean very substantially - but it captures the essence of the book perfectly. The characters are all spot-on, well written and superbly cast. Obviously, Bill Skarsgård steals the show as Pennywise, but the others are great, too. Again, excellent casting all around. The characters all look and act just like their novel counterparts, and their physical likenesses are spot-on. Of the child actors, my favorites were Finn Wolfhard as Richie and Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie.
Purists might whine about all the changes, but a lot of them were I think necessary. If the movie had been a carbon copy of the book, it would have been totally predictable, and that would have killed any suspense the movie would have generated. And it IS suspenseful. Tim Curry's Pennywise was all right, but he never felt particularly threatening. Skarsgård's Pennywise is vicious, relentless, bloodthirsty, and menacing. Some of his lines are blackly humorous, but he's not a figure of fun the way Curry's Pennywise was. This Pennywise is a genuine monster. Imagine if Heath Ledger's Joker and Freddy Krueger had a baby, and you wouldn't be too far off the mark.
There was plenty of creepiness and suspense, as befitting a horror movie, but there was a lot of refreshing - and extremely funny - humor, particularly from Wolfhard's Richie. Not many movies have made me laugh as hard, or as many times, as this one did. There were also a lot of touching moments, made all the more effective by the genuine chemistry shared by the actors.
A few minor caveats: The film is sometimes a bit too reliant on jump scares and loud music. Some of the parts that are meant to be frightening are a bit (unintentionally) humorous. Bowers and his gang felt a bit under-used and undeveloped. But these are quibbles. It excels in just about every way, more than making up for its few small flaws.
This was one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen in a long time. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a solid 10.