Some good points but ultimately disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (17 September 2017)

I was full of excitement sitting down in the theatre, my cinema trips are rare these days, and as a fan of the book and a member of the generation terrified by Tim Curry's Pennywise in 1990 I SO MUCH wanted this to be good.
The opening scene is very strong. Georgie is out playing on a flooded rain-swept street, then his paper boat is swept into a storm drain. peering down the drain, the face of a clown appears, who introduces himself as PennyWise, the dancing clown. The clown jokes and joshes with Georgie, talking about circuses, and popcorn, they giggle together, then suddenly, the clown falls silent, his face goes slack, and he just stares..... It was a truly chilling moment, and I was thinking "Yes! They've nailed it, this is going to be great"
Opening titles roll, and we get introduced to the other kids in the next few scenes. I was pleased to see that all the kids in the losers club, with the exception of Mike, were very capable actors with real screen presence. Bev, and Eddie have real star quality, Henry Bowers is suitably hate-able. So far so good!
And then, and then.....something went wrong, and the slow deflation and disappointment began to set in. I can't say this film was bad, it wasn't bad, but there was simply nothing new here for me that I hadn't seen in fifty other horror movies, Pennywise just became another bouncy vibrating CGI monster, with no more menace or substance than a video game character. In the first few encounters with the kids and IT, you quickly realise that we're back to very familiar ground, a series of suspenseful build ups to noisy jump scares which get just a little bit less effective every time. All this leads up to a final encounter which, although interesting, was unsatisfying, and most definitely not scary.
As other reviewers on here have pointed out, this is a perfectly decent movie for young viewers who have not had the chance to become desensitized to the well worn tropes of the genre. Sadly, despite that early promise, there's nothing special, new or innovative going on here. Such a shame.