IT Was a Great...Comedy?

Rating: 8/10 (9 September 2019)

Yes, you read that correctly. Comedy. This movie had the tone of not wanting to take itself seriously and simultaneously wanting to be your standard, cliche drama/horror film. Honestly, I loved it, and thought it was genuinely funny. Call me heartless or sadistic, but I let out some chuckles when Pennywise struck three of his four victims (the exception being Eddie, that death was actually done a lot better in terms of emotion in this film than the Tim Curry miniseries). Here's why, though: I can't take the thought of some killer clown that sounds like Winnie The Pooh on a bad day (I kept waiting for him to say "Oh bother" during the film) seriously in the slightest. There were maybe three parts in the entire film that made me genuinely startled, and of course they were the jumpscares I saw coming. My brain has yet to learn after all this time to always expect it to happen at any time. Now, I went to see this movie last night only because my friends had goaded me into it, because I've never really been a fan of present day horror films or It in general. I'll watch the original miniseries if I'm bored or really want to see one of the subjectively best performances Tim Curry has given in his entire career of acting. But I ended up loving this movie, not because I liked the source material, not because it was a good movie, but because it went from being overly brutal (like the scene of Adrian being beaten by those teens at the beginning) to so over to top to genuinely funny, I couldn't place any emotion to feel but joy and humor for just how far this movie would go to try and be creepy. Other scenes like the final fight between the gang and Pennywise (besides the incredibly annoyingly over the top part where Georgie kept yelling "You lied and I died" during Bill's last hallucination scene--One time would've done it for me, but the creepy factor went sour with an overexaggerated performance), the scene where Mike drugs Eddie so he can see his visions and memories, and one other scene I can't seem to remember as of right now (but it caught my attention for sure) were pretty cool and interesting scenes. The camera angles and some of the transitions were very smooth and construed all the emotion I needed to feel during said scenes. The one time I was genuinely confused and could only laugh by cracking a joke related to one of our friends was the scene where Beverly visits her old apartment and runs into the old lady who decides to strip and chase Bev through the apartment complex. Though I must say, while I was completely indifferent towards this just like with 90% of the 90s miniseries, this time around the story was actually memorable to me. Likely because I actually enjoyed it, as was mentioned before. Whether or not the writers or anyone else involved aimed at it to be an unexpected comedy horror is unknown to me, but if it was meant to be genuinely scary, that makes it all that much better. So if you want a great laugh and ponder upon whether or not the movie knows what genre it wants to be, I definitely recommend this movie (plus there's a cameo by Stephen King!!! :D). Cheers!