Review of the Movie “IT”

Have you seen It? I saw it opening weekend, but decided to mull it over for a while before I wrote my review. I needed time to digest it, I guess.

First of all, if you’ve seen It, please let me know your thoughts below. I’m curious to know what you made of it.

Here’s my thoughts…

Pros

Where are they finding these child actors these days? Like Netflix’s Stranger Things, the kids of It steal the show.

Jaeden Lieberher (“Bill”), Sophia Lillis (“Bev”), Jeremy Ray Taylor (“Ben”), Finn Wolfhard (“Richie”), Chosen Jacobs (“Mike”), Jack Dylan Grazer (“Eddie”), and Wyatt Oleff (“Stan”) nail the Losers Club members. Their performances are all spot on. The range of emotions that they pull off? To already have that in their repertoires…wow. They could teach some adult actors a thing or two.

And then there’s Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Sure the clown is the most memorable character from the story. He’s literally the poster child not only for It, but also for creepy clowns in general. Skarsgård‘s rendition of him is more fun than spooky, but he has his sinister moments. (He didn’t creep me out as much as I’d hoped. I’ll elaborate on that in Cons. ) Still, his acting can’t be faulted. He brought Stephen King’s clown to life.

It is by far one of my fave Stephen King books. I remember it took me forever to read. It wasn’t until someone posted that they re-read it over the summer –all 1,200 pages,– that I realized why it’d taken me so long to get through way back when. 1,200 pages? That was one thick book!

Anyway, in case for whatever reason you haven’t seen the movie and are keeping yourself in the dark, here’s your spoiler alert: [STOP READING HERE]

This was only Part 1.

Which I can see why they did it that way. I was skeptical they’d be able to pull off a movie version in just one shot. ABC needed a whole miniseries. (Which, at the time, I felt did it justice.)

However, this leads to my cons list.

Cons

I loved how the miniseries bounced back-and-forth from present day to the past just as the book did.

This version is more linear and sticks only to the story of the kids. Which makes sense for how they’re doing it with a Part 2 to come, but I’m a traditionalist and liked the back-and-forth storytelling style of the original.

It also made for a long movie. Some parts I wished were shorter, and one scene that’s my favorite from the book (with the inhaler) wasn’t in the movie at all. (I heard other people complain about this too.)

And Pennywise is creepy, but he wasn’t actually scary. Some of the techniques they used to scare people, like building up tension and having certain sudden scenes (like in the tunnel when one of the bullies gets it) did heighten the fright and/or create jump scares.

But as far as scary…Pennywise ain’t got nothing on American Horror Story’s Twisty. (But maybe if I didn’t have ol’ Twisty to compare to now I might still find Pennywise scary.)

Overall

It was a good movie.

Did I love it like I hoped to?

No.

I loved the kids. I was happy to spend time with the new version. But I wasn’t smitten and itching to re-watch it when it’s released for home viewing.

However, I am looking forward to seeing what they do with Part 2. I will be going back for that.

Overall, I’d give it a four out of five skulls. What about you?