Stephen King's 'It' Review: Great Performance and Visuals Keep the Shock Scares Under Control
Fans of Rob Reiner's 1986 horror classic might have to watch the new 2017 adaptation with a grain of salt as the new "IT" piles on jump scares, even as the solid cast and attention to visual detail hold the movie together.
Andrés Muschietti's rendition of this classic horror thriller follows the formula down to the detail, with a few updates. A group of young kids is just trying to get by, enjoying their youth despite one of them living under the abuse of a father, or dealing with the loss of a sibling.
These kids, like Variety notes, carry a common theme from Stephen King to the big screen. Even as the youngsters are being terrorized, they can't depend on the adults around them. Parents, teachers, and authorities are either indifferent, in a drunken stupor, or are downright hostile to the things that the kids are trying to say to them.
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This interplay between neglected kids, adults, bullies, and a shape-shifting murder clown is almost enough to keep the movie coherent. Death is an ever-present threat here, even to kids, as seen right from the opening scene as Pennywise the clown (Bill Skarsgård) drags down an unwitting boy.
Much of the development in Stephen King's book, or in the 1986 original for that matter, is glossed over in the course of 135 minutes, as The Verge notes. The rest is jump scares and sudden lunges, dosed out in equal measure to each of the seven kids in the Loser's Club.
That's a lot of scare scenes, that after a while, the lunges start to blur together. The movie looks pretty doing it again and again, though, thanks to the visual flair that Muschietti brings to the movie screen.
The video below shows this year's rendition of the classic "IT" scene, as the movie comes out on Sep. 8 to cinemas across the U.S.
