Movie Review : " It"

Friday night my daughter and were talking about what her mom was going to do I told her she was going to go see “It”.Because 7 year olds know everything My daughter replied “No she is going to see a movie about a scary clown. I then tried to explain to her what the title of said scary clown movie was . But if you are wanting to see a movie about scary clowns you might be better off with the current season of American Horror Story. As “it’ doesn’t limit itself to just being about a scary clown and the bigger more sinister picture is well painted . itself among the some of the better Stephen King adaptations to film, this movie falls short of the Shining or the Mist in terms of scares , but has a lot of heart.This is only the first chapter so if you go in wanting to for them to return to Derry as adults then you better stock up on pop-corn and wait for the next movie. Generally speaking I think the director nailed the personalities of kids. This was the studio putting a ton of faith in a director whose other work “Momma” was luke warm. This film does a better job than the Tim Curry tele-vision miniseries. The big question you are really going to ask here is how does Pennywise stack up?

So you are asking Bill Skarsgard to stuck up against Tim Curry. If you strip away any cgi that was augmenting Skarsgard’s performance and kept it do who delivered their lines better than Curry would win.This also outline’s one of the movie strengths that blows the nostalgia horror fans are known for hanging onto out of the water. That is no saying we need to re-make “The Exorcist” of “the Shining” with today’s effects. In fact since this was originally a made for television mini-series and not a full length theatrical release then technically it’s not a remake. So it’s 2017 and has a bigger budget than the televised version, so it looks better. This is not just from a effects perspective there are some well placed shots, most of these you have seen in the trailer. Though a few like right before Pennywise starts dancing in his lair, so effective.

Pennywise never goes full out bug in this version, just like we are once again not shown the kids giving it to Beverly in sewer, I think that is something you can only see in Second Life. The sexual tension was more present. Not just with the kids, but a few of the townspeople and her father. Much like the lesson Joss Whedon taught us in Buffy that highschool is a terrifying place. The early adolescent world of these kids is just as scary as anything they encounter in the sewers. So it is much truer to King’s vision in this regard. I think the maniacal headshaking charge we see repeated by Pennywise was the only part of the movie I did not like, though the inclusion of the Wolf-man the protagonist sees in the book would have been a nice touch but perhaps Universal had too tight a reins on those rights. I haven’t read the book since it’s release in 1986. But the impact the book had still made me able to weigh it against the film and able to chant”he thrusts his fist against the posts, and still insists he sees the ghosts” which could have been given a little more context. So even the overblown drama of the Hollywood moments was not able to diminish the films entertainment value. If you are a horror fan you might find it lacking in the scares department, but it’s still a fun ride for Stephen King Fans.