The 1990 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 novel It casts a long shadow, one this new big-screen adaptation struggles to emerge from. It's also hard to deny that some of this film's creative thunder has been stolen by Stranger Things, which was heavily influenced by Stephen King.
Setting aside these two mitigating factors and judging the new It strictly on its own terms reveals an effectively creepy, well-constructed horror film with a sturdy emotional core.
The original story took place across two time periods, with young and old versions of every character. This film focuses only on the childhood part of the story, updating it to the late 1980s (from the novel's 1950s), which makes dramatic and commercial sense in today's franchise-centric film marketplace in how it sets up a sequel with a contemporary setting.
For now, though, we're focused on the pre-teen version of The Losers Club, seven small-town friends each enduring real-world horrors while also being tormented by an evil, supernatural entity that often takes the form of a sinister-looking clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard).
Despite the obvious care and attention paid to the horror elements by director Andy Muschietti (Mama), the scenes in question can't help but start to feel like a succession of conceptual set pieces rather than natural extensions of the story. The coming-of-age elements carry a lot more weight, and the young cast is uniformly excellent, with Finn Wolfhard (from Stranger Things) standing out as the foul-mouthed Richie.
Skarsgard puts his enormous eyes to good use as a frenetic, jittery Pennywise, but his performance often feels hidden behind special effects.
It's encouraging that mainstream studio horror has matured to the point where we can have kids as protagonists, and even if this new It's ambitions to be Stand By Me with horror aren't ever quite properly fulfilled, it stands as a valiant pursuit of that ideal.
Cast: Bill Skarsgard, Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis
Director: Andy Muschietti
Running Time: 135mins
Rating: R16 (Violence, offensive language and horror)
Verdict: A solid horror, no clowning.
DID YOU KNOW...
Released 27 years after the original IT television series, the first trailer for the new IT film set a new record when it was viewed 197 million times in the first 24 hours.
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