Gratuitously excessive bad language, random red herring, and predictability.

Rating: 1/10 (19 October 2017)

The Good. The Movie was well filmed and well acted. The bad: I grew up in the 80s, and not even drunken sailors and pirates in a bar fight swear as much as the otherwise adorable kids. It was completely unnecessary and excessive to the point it ruined the movie for me, and I'm nothing close to a prude. The incessant sexual references, by kids who by and large had no idea what sex was, was also not something authentic, and was off-putting. We had swim trunks in the 80s, and "tighty whities" an inch thick in the movie might have been necessary to retain an r-rating, but pretty unrealistic both as an impromptu swim (we went skinny dipping) or as a planned swim (uh, trunks, hello!?). A girl cuts her long hair in a sink and long sections of hair go right down. Drains plugged in the 80s folks, and sinks had traps and strainers. Later, she puts a tape measure down the sink and it goes straight down 24 feet. Since they're looking for an old well it seems relevant, but it's below the sink, and there's no explanation for what seems to be a red herring. There's no explanation why adults don't see the bad thing (trying not to explain too much) but the characters reveal that adults go missing as well as kids so it's not just a kid thing. There are absolutely no surprises and everything that happens is painfully obvious in advance. One of the kids does research and discovers tragedies with high death counts every 27 years, but there's no explanation for why that happens or why in the beginning it would be a circus fire or something, but then becomes a series of individual attacks, and there's no explanation for why no one in town notices large groups of people going missing every 27 years, especially children, which people tended to keep track of in the 80s. There is no exposition to get any sense at all why things are happening. In short, it's pretty random. I haven't read the book, so I don't know if it's a bad adaptation, or if Mr. King is coasting. I don't read/ watch many horror movies, but Pet Cemetery was excellent with none of the flaws I mentioned here. I would have walked out had I gone by myself, and someone I talked to after the movie had left halfway through. and demanded his money back.