CGI clown terrorizes Derry

Rating: 5/10 (7 September 2017)

I had high hopes for this movie. In fact, you could say this was one of the most anticipated movies of my lifetime. I was psychologically tormented by Tim Curry at the age of 10, and it took several years to get over the weekly nightmares. Although aspects of the trailers made me concerned this was going to turn into a jump scare film that you stop taking seriously by the midpoint, the overwhelmingly positive reviews that were coming out after the initial screenings had me optimistic and excited to be the first one telling everyone to go see it. Unfortunately, I can't do that after seeing IT.
The first 10 minutes of the film were perfect. Ultimately what I was most looking forward to from IT was a new take on Pennywise. I wanted to see what a different actor could do with him, particularly his ability to be psychologically creepy and disturbing. And I felt like I got that in the first scene, and that was pretty much it. After the Georgie scene it seemed like anything Skarsgård did was masked by CGI, overblown audio, and distracting cinematography in 80-90% of his remaining screen time. What's sad is I think the mainstream audience will still eat this style up. The same people who will call this Pennywise scarier than the last are the people who said the Star Wars prequels were better because they had more LIGHT SABERS in them. OK.
Sure, I enjoyed the crude Richie and Eddie humor, and thought it was well-cast for the most part. But by the end I was almost yawning through the Pennywise scenes. I just got out of the film and am alone in a dark basement right now and am not scared in the slightest. There is something wrong with that.