It

Year: 2017
Director: Andy Muschietti
Cast: Jaden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Bill Skarsgard


Plot: In the summer of 1989, seven high school kids battle a demonic clown that has been kidnapping and eating children in the town of Derry, Maine.


Review: The much hyped remake of Stephen King's It has finally arrived. This reviewer only has vague memories of the original TV miniseries, so he won't be making comparisons here.

We begin in October 1988 as the film shows how the evil Pennywise the dancing clown kills seven year old Georgie Denbrough while he was playing with his paper boat in the rain. Cut to eight months later, where we are introduced to a bunch of high school kids who are considered "losers" by their seniors: Ben, a tubby kid who loves listening to New Kids On The Block; Stanley, a Jewish boy struggling to pass his upcoming Torah test; Eddie, a hypochondriac kid; Richie, a fast talking boy who isn't as cool as he thinks he is; Beverly, a young girl who is a victim of sexual abuse by her dad; Mike, an African American kid working at a meat factory; and Bill, Georgie's stuttering older brother who still believes he's alive. Each of them encounter Pennywise on different occasions, and when they realise this, they decide to band together and take the fight to him.

Director Andy Muschietti skilfully balances the drama and horror elements here, and even manages to throw in some humour while he's at it. The horror here is based on what frightens the kids the most and how Pennywise uses them to his advantage, so we get a variety of scares here, from a dark library to an abandoned house, to a flooded basement, a scary painting etc ....though my favorite one involves a bathroom sink. To be honest, if you're a seasoned horror fan, none of these scares might seem original, but Muschietti uses them well and films them perfectly (the cinematography by Chung Hoon Chung is sublime), so none of them feel out of place at all. 

Performance wise, all the kids chosen to play the losers put in stellar performances, but personally I enjoyed Jaden Lieberher and Sophia Lillis' work the most as Bill and Beverly respectively. Lieberher, recently seen in Midnight Special, is very convincing as the boy struggling to come to terms with his brother's demise, while Lillis, who resembles a young Elizabeth Olsen, is perfect as the tough yet vulnerable Beverly. As for Pennywise himself, Bill Skarsgard does a good enough job here, but I personally didn't find him scary. I wouldn't blame this on Skarsgard though, perhaps the script just didn't paint him as dark as he could have been.

On the flipside, the film does take a good amount of time to build itself up to the final battle, but it's well worth the wait. Muschietti doesn't hold back on the violence here, so this is definitely not for the faint-hearted. 

In the book, the kids will return as adults to face the clown one last time, but we will have to wait for the sequel to see this. No worries, It is a solid horror flick which will perform well enough at the box office to earn the sequel it needs. (7.5/10)