An almost perfect adaptation of King's epic horror novel

Rating: 9/10 (8 September 2017)

A brief foreword: Stephen King's It remains my favourite horror novel ever since I read it 13 years ago. It terrified me then and terrifies me still. I always wondered how they could adapt this huge 1000+ page novel into a well-made, scary film. In 1990 a miniseries was released and unfortunately failed miserably. As much as I like Tim Curry as Pennywise and the flashback scenes the series is generally terrible and fails to do the book justice.
Enter this adaptation which, while not 100% faithful, captures the essence of the book. The film is set in the 80's, not 50's, and follows only the parts of the novel that deal with the group as children (rather than flashing forward and back). A few other parts of the novel are changed or left out which I won't go into much detail about so as not to spoil anything. Some of the omissions I can understand, others are slightly disappointing as I think they would have made the film scarier.
Briefly, the film follows The Losers Club, a group of seven children who face day-to-day challenges of overprotective, ignorant or abusive parents while trying not to get eaten by a shape-shifting entity that often takes the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
The movie's biggest strength lies in the casting. The group of child actors are just so fantastic and an absolute pleasure to watch. In fact, I could just watch a movie about their antics without any of the horrors for hours. The actors give life to such an eclectic group of children and they deserve all the praise they are getting. Bill Skarsgard absolutely nails Pennywise, rather than Tim Curry's more human looking version, Skarsgard appears demonic and alien from the get go (also thanks to a fantastic SFX team).
Thanks to cinematographer Chung Hoon Chung It looks beautiful, every shot feels carefully framed, clearly a lot of effort was put into making this so. Everything from the opening scene with Georgie running through the rainy streets of Derry to the children playing in the quarry could be framed a work of art.
Andres Muschietti is the man behind all this and I must respect his vision for It, even if others may not see it or agree with it. Previously he has directed Mama, a fairly standard horror film and not in the same league as this. Maybe this was a special project for him, whatever the case this is a massive improvement and a fantastic showcase for his directing abilities.
As I mentioned earlier the screenplay deviates slightly from the source, generally not to the movies detriment. However, it feels somewhat light on scares and tends to focus more on "Stand By Me" type scenes. If there is one thing I would have liked more of is scares but not at the expense of spending time with the characters. The films running time is over 2 hours but this goes so quickly a few more scenes of horror wouldn't have gone astray. What is there is genuinely frightening with some scenes more effective than others. The film is not overly graphic (I expected more honestly) but stays true to some key scenes, particularly young Georgie's famous encounter at the beginning. What I did find interesting is the stories focus not only as It as the villain but the adults almost like secondary villains. Aware of the evil present but preferring to turn the blind eye. This idea stood out quite prominently, and further highlighted the children's struggles, which in turn makes the film even more satisfying come the credits.
Ever since I read It I dreamed of what a film adaptation would be like, and how scary it could be. This may not be exactly what I pictured, and there are things I would have done differently, but as it stands this is an excellent film. A beautiful blend of drama and horror with a group of lovable kids and a terrifying villain. This is easily one of the best King adaptations put to screen and quite simply a high quality horror film, something I haven't seen in some time. Consider me thoroughly excited for Chapter Two, and for The Losers Club to confront It one last time.
9/10