It (2017)

I'm going to start off with a disclaimer: I have never read It by Stephen King. I owned the book when I was younger, I read the first chapter and then I put it down forever. I love his short stories and novellas, I cannot deal with his novels. He's too verbose for me, I just want him to get to the point. I did watch the TV mini series a while ago and while I don't remember much of it, I do remember being bored. If you're afraid of clowns, I guess it might be scary. To me though, clowns are just weird space aliens who can make T-Rex shadow puppets eat people and turn them into popcorn. (If you haven't seen Killer Klowns from Outer Space, you need to.) So why did I even bother watching It, right? A lot of people told me it was better than the original and the new Pennywise was creepier...Honestly, I completely disagree. Tim Curry was way scarier. The makeup in the remake is almost cartoonish, I didn't like it.

It is about a group of kids in Derry who are being terrorized by a clown. Or an evil entity masquerading as a clown. Every 27 years, there are a significant amount of disappearances and deaths in this town. Whatever scares the kids the most is what Pennywise shows them, and based on at least one scene from the film, it appears that only the kids can see these manifestations. I really don't have anything else to say about the plot specifically, it is what it is.

The opening scene with Georgie in the basement was the scariest part of the entire film, probably because of a recurring nightmare I had as a child. There is nothing scarier when you're a kid than going down into a dark basement. And of course, the scene after that where he goes after the paper boat...Every time I hear an adult complain about kids today staying inside and playing video games or watching TV, I want to show them what happened to Georgie when he went outside to play in the rain. See what happens? SPOILERS: Your arm gets bitten off by a sewer clown.

A lot of things in this movie made me extremely uncomfortable, and not in a good, horror movie kind of way. Beverly's relationship with her father, the lecherous pharmacist, the bullying, the sheep being shot (I almost turned the movie off). Surprisingly, not the death of a bunch of children, although I did feel bad for Georgie. And I felt very frustrated because these kids never asked the adults for help. Where were all the cops in this movie? Oh, right. Henry killed the only one in the entire town.

I love movies like The Monster Squad and Little Monsters, it may just be nostalgia because I watched them when I was a kid myself. Those are both films about groups of kids working together to overcome the threat of monsters. Stephen King's It doesn't have the same effect or humor those two films had, the tone was more serious and it's definitely a darker movie, so I'm hesitant to say, "This is a great movie for kids!" Because it doesn't really have the same kind of "innocence" those movies had. It's very gory and it's not fun, it's just disturbing on many different levels. Is it even meant for kids? Doubtful. I just keep trying to make that connection because of other films (like those I mentioned above). Don't let your children watch It, unless you want to traumatize them.

Overall, the cinematography was nice, it had a good musical score. It held my interest for about an hour before my mind started drifting. But the movie didn't scare me and that's what I was hoping for based on everything that people were telling me about the remake. So it's definitely not my kind of horror film, but I can still see the appeal of it.