Let it be known off the rip that I didn’t hate It. In fact, there’s much to love here. It’s just that the hype surrounding this film going into the theater did not match my expectations. But, It is the jolt of life that’s needed right now and a welcome distraction of classic good versus evil. This also stands much higher than the 1990 miniseries.

In Derry, Maine in the summer of 1989, a group of kids who call themselves The Losers Club encounter an ancient evil being known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård). Pennywise has been linked to the various disappearances of kids and teens in Derry. When Pennywise sets his sights on The Losers Club, the group must not only overcome their fear but their personal problems in the process.
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The stand out factor in this movie head and shoulders above everything else is the character development on The Losers and all their retrospective performances. Every single one of these kids are acting as if their life depended on it. The standout, however, is Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier. Everyone knows this kid as Mike Wheeler from Stranger Things, and here when things get too unbearable he always brings it back down to earth with a crass, profanity laden comment or joke. And yes, Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise is menacing and terrifying in a way that Tim Curry’s wasn’t (Tim is still the man in that role though.

The photography is amazing in this as director Andy Muschietti got Park Chan-wook’s, DP Chung-hoon Chung. Muschietti juggled the right performances with the right images to make a well-crafted movie. The sequence with the carousel slide projector packs so many thrills and suspense into such a small sequence that I asked myself why can’t more modern horror movies do more of that including the rest of It.

Yet, I do wish the film explored more into the insidious side of this fictional town of Derry. The film points out that there is something more at work in Derry itself outside of Pennywise. Outside of a few parents and a store clerk and a librarian, adults are largely absent from this film. I’ll tell you that I wanted their presence more and could’ve planted some seeds of just why it seems the adults are indifferent to the disappearances of the children.


My other main problem with this movie is outside of the character development and direction is that feels and plays like a standard studio horror movie. In lesser hands, this could’ve been soulless. As it is you can see the machinations of WB at work here. When Cary Fukunaga was attached, he was going for a more psychological aspect than the conventional jump scare route. Birth.Movies.Death covered just what could have been and it seems like a missed opportunity to really subvert the things and get more into the personal demons of the kids that Steven King did in his book in a much more visceral way. Now, I’m not saying we need all the sex stuff cause ew, but Cary was right in that WB wanted a more traditional horror movie.

This movie is indicative of the problem with Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t hate It. I would not give it a rotten score. But, I also would not give a fresh as this has too many fingerprints on it of a generic studio horror movie in its execution. To sum up my feelings, let me take you to a scene from the first season of The Wire in the ninth episode. Omar goes to a stash house asking for money. The dealers are so scared that they throw out a trash bag of drugs to Omar instead. Omar inspects the product and says, “Fair enough”. That was me with It. With the movie being hyped up for weeks on how good it was as well as just the route path the film takes, I can say “fair enough” without being too moved by it all. I will say that once they show the title card again before the start of the end credits, they add something that had my audience cheering. I get why people would love this film as when that end title card came up, I won’t lie in that I’m ready to go the journey with everyone there.