IT (2017) Review

I was worried recently that I’d miss this film at the cinema due to a knee operation but luckily I was able to stumble my way into the cinema and get it watched. You can read my review of the original by clicking HERE! Remakes and reboots are usually disliked by horror fans mainly because they’re miles below the original or they’re a pointless Hollywood remake of an Asian horror because people are too lazy to read subtitles.

Director – Andy Muschietti

Writers – Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, Gary Dauberman

Novel – Stephen King

Stars – Bill Skarsgard, Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff and Nicholas Hamilton

Run Time – 135 minutes

Budget – $35 million

Tagline – You’ll Float Too

IMDB.com link

Trivia – Whenever Pennywise’s eyes look in two different directions, there are no special effects used for that. Director Andrés Muschietti had planned on using CGI to achieve this, and informed Bill Skarsgård of this, but Skarsgård then demonstrated that he could do it on his own, and that is what is used in the final film.

Trivia – Pennywise does not blink.

Trivia – The Duffer Brothers originally wanted to direct the movie, but were overlooked as they were not “established” enough. They went on to create Stranger Things (2016), which co-stars Finn Wolfhard (Richie) and pays homage to Stephen King.

There is a time when a remake is needed and can be pretty enjoyable two examples would be The Thing which was a remake of an old black and white movie called The Thing From Another World and Evil Dead, both at least enjoyable. On the other side of that argument are countless films like Nightmare on Elm Street or for some unknown reason Cabin Fever.

Enough of that though lets get to why you’re here, IT first appeared as a TV movie in the 90’s and if you’re of my generation then Pennywise goes right up along side the God level figures of horror Freddy and Jason etc. That was a mini series basically a long film split in half for TV, for this reboot they’ve decided to go with two films one telling the story of the children’s battle with Pennywise and a sequel where they return as adults.

This remake starts off very similar Billy makes a boat for Georgie to use in the rain storm but the boat gets away from him and disappears down a drain. Enter the new version of Pennywise hanging around in the sewer, we’re then treated to a much more gruesome version of the events we’re familiar with.

Billy is joined by all his loser friends mouthy Richie, the always “ill” Eddie and Stan the quiet one who doesn’t really do much at all. They’re bullied by the local asshole Henry Bowers and his gang of goons, the goons also target the new guy tubby Ben. He has no friends but our group of unlucky losers help him out when Bowers chases him, then comes Beverly another victim that joins the self proclaimed Loser’s Club and ends up a romantic interest of more than one of the group.

It seems to take a while for the last member to join the group Mike also an outsider. They all enjoy hanging around together and build a strong bond especially after rescuing Mike from Bowers in the epic rock fight scene. Over the course of the film they all start to see strange things, things that would mess anyone’s head up. Pennywise targets them all and soon thanks to Ben’s history work the kids begin to figure out who Pennywise is.

They all join together to fight the evil but Billy mainly does it because he wants his little brother back or to at least find out what happened to him. Everything culminates in a final battle with Pennywise after he takes one of the group hostage.

The Good

• There was some debate online about the design of Pennywise but damn did they nail it, Bill Skarsgard plays the part well. The worst thing they could have done would be to copy Tim Curry’s version so instead they went for something different and it worked.
• All the child actors in this are great.
• Due to how far effects have come since 1990 I think this film has a lot more creepy scenes. The way they introduce each member of the Losers Club seeing different forms of IT was really well done.
• Nice pacing to the film building to the eventual final battle.
• The bathroom scene at Beverly’s home.
• The slides scene was creepy as hell.
• I could continue to write points for all the scenes I like but I’ll just end it by saying there’s a lot of really well done creepy scenes in this one that show how scary Pennywise is.
• It’s something that goes unnoticed in a lot of films but the score for this movie was really good.

The Bad

• Although the film does an okay job of growing the bond between the group I feel it lacked something in comparison to the original.
• I think Mike could have joined the group a bit earlier in the film, this would have helped to make the bond seem stronger.
• Whilst Pennywise is well done I just don’t see why Georgie would talk to him at all he’s too creepy.

I really enjoyed this film it’s a great take on IT and from what I’ve heard is closer to the source material then the original TV series. I have compared various aspects of the film and the TV series but I feel it’s not possible to say which is better until we’ve seen the sequel and this version of the story is complete. So far they’ve nailed it but it really will depend on the next chapter, for me the original fell flat when they became adults so in my mind the challenge has been set.

It is worth noting that a lot of the areas this film excels in over the original are due to it being a movie and not a TV series. The dark atmosphere, more brutal killing of Gerogie along with just flat out more scares.

I recommend you get to a cinema and get this watched as soon as you can it’s a really good film with some creepy scenes and a creepy villain. I can’t wait to see what happens in the sequel.

Overall Rating – 9/10