Competent but Overrated

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2017)

For a horror film with so much love, it's really hard not to expect more. The 90's made for tv version starring Tim Curry is remembered fondly by many. While that love isn't totally misplaced, in large part due to Curry, this was a film I really didn't mind having remade and updated for a more savvy audience.
This 2017 version really drops the ball in terms of scares. They really had an opportunity to build the mythos of Pennywise, filling his scenes with a real sense of dread and the terror of the unknown. What we wind of getting are scenes that feel shot for a trailer, which are then truncated with a cheap scare, using loud noises and CGI frenzy in place of real atmosphere. This is in no way to undercut the performance of Skarsgard, who seemed to show up with a real character and menace in mind. The film really underserves his ability to frighten. We can't spend any time anticipating what evils might be unleashed, as the studio seems to think the audience is getting bored.
One of the most frustrating scenes is when we see IT in the basement, coming up out of the water. Just as I'm acquainting myself with the scene and getting into the atmosphere and enjoying the Skarsgard performance, they feel the need to resort to loud bangs, CGI, and then cut to a different scene. They turn a novel idea, (pardon the pun) into a run of the mill, fresh off the assembly line modern horror movie.
The child actors all do a pretty fantastic job, but the streamlined straight forward approach that deviates from the novel does little to allow us to invest in these characters as much as we want. We get all the character beats we should, but they feel rushed, almost like Cliff's notes of what happens to each character. Most of their scenes feel more obligatory than a coming-of-age tale.
I recognize books and film as two different arts, and I don't hate a movie choice just because it isn't in the source material. They SHOULD differ, as they're two modes of telling a story. But what they did with the story feels a lot more like a studio product than a story anyone cared to tell.
If this is what they had in mind all along, I understand why Cary Fukunaga stepped aside. And after his masterful work in the first season of True Detective, that should throw up some red flags.