Based on the acclaimed Stephen King novel, a group of kids known as “The Losers Club” must battle an evil shapeshifting clown creature that has been abducting and killing people in a small Maine town for hundreds of years.
So I have read the book, and it’s over 1000 pages; like, I think you could legally make the case this thing could be used as a murder weapon, it’s so big 😂. My point being, they got a lot to adapt for a two-hour film. Granted, they only focus on the part when the characters are young, but even then it’s impressive how many details from the book they were able to include and make feel natural to the film.
Bill Skarsgård is fantastic as Pennywise; the way he distorts his voice, tricks with his eyes to make them look glassy, and even how he’ll salivate without even acknowledging it are all very effective and creepy. I would say Tim Curry’s Pennywise is still my favorite, but Bill Skarsgård is more book accurate, so that’s a plus.
The entire child cast are really good; they feel very natural and get along great and feel like genuine pals, but also, for people so young, they are able to do some real nuanced and impressive acting, so the casting director better have gotten a raise. 😂
Andy Muschietti's direction felt like a mix of Robert Rodriguez and Tim Burton. He has a great eye for making things look spooky and unsettling, but with a lot of interesting and eye-catching camera movements and shots. It really gave the movie a fun action feel while still being genuinely scary and unsettling.
I do wish Mike had a little bit more to do in this movie; he feels the least developed of the kids, but the actor is very good, and I can say he does get more to do in the sequel, which is nice.
Richie and Eddie are the comic relief characters, and well, they definitely are crude (they are like 13, after all), but they do have some pretty funny lines throughout.
Ben was my favorite character in the book, so I’m happy to say they did a good job adapting him and made him very likable.
Sophia Lillis & Jaeden Martell are the child standouts as Bev and Bill. Jaeden brings a lot of depth and pathos to his character, while Sophia is very charming and brings a lot of strong emotion to her character.
So in the book, Henry Bowers is written very psychopathically and is just this crazy evil kid, and the movie definitely keeps that theme, but I feel like the actor Nicholas Hamilton brought a humanity and sympathy for the character that made him a little more nuanced.
Wyatt Oleff probably had the hardest acting challenges as a kid, having to show a lot of different fear and terror and screaming in general, and this kid knows just how to turn it on and just seem wrecked very easily, which is very impressive.
Jackson Robert Scott plays Georgie, the kid in the yellow raincoat who has a very notable interaction with Pennywise… To say the least 😂, but that kid knows how to turn on the sad puppy dog eyes, and he and Jaeden have some of the most powerful scenes together.
The movie can get a little bit repetitive since Pennywise goes after the kids one by one, and the scenes always play out with the kid like seeing something weird, investigating, and then eventually getting scared and having to outrun Pennywise, and for a little bit, it can feel a little “rinse, wash, repeat,” but it’s only for a small part, and when the kids start to come together, you can really feel theircamaraderie well.
The movie takes place in 1989, and I loved all the little flourishes. The decorators did, with movie posters and time-accurate logos and references, not to mention using actual 80s movie tropes like “the cleaning up montage” from 80s movies in this movie to help it feel more time accurate, or a lot of the style of the film is trying to capture that Steven Spielberg Stranger Things 80s vibe, which it exceeds and is a fun aspect throughout the whole film.
The effects throughout the whole film look great, not just the practical ones, but the CGI ones are even impressive.
I loved the look of Pennywise’s lair; it was very creative, and it added something that wasn’t in the book that I thought was a nice addition.
It (2017) is one of the top 10, maybe top five, Stephen King adaptations; it honors the text and themes of the book while also doing its own thing with great scares, acting, pacing, effects, and a very memorable villain. I give the movie a high four stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. This IT is a big hIT 🤡😂
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