I read this book when i was a teenager and it scared the crap out of me. I watched the Tim Curry"It" miniseries later on in life and it was also horrifying. I found the latest remake to kind of be relying on CGI and shock tactics. Perhaps it is because I am very familiar with the story from having read the enormous book in the 80's, but I didn't find this film to be anything terribly special.
The basic story is that in Derry, Maine kids keep getting kidnapped once ever 27 years or so. The community doesn't seem overly concerned about this and you would think that an occurrence like this, which is well-documented would put the city on high alert, but nah - whatever. It seems we need a bunch of pre-pubescent teenagers to crack the case here. The storyline is consistent with the book so I suppose I should not get all worked up about that.
clowns are scary - that is for sure. I have felt this way my entire life. I didn't think it was necessary for them to use so much CGI in order to make Pennywise capable of opening his mouth to expose 7 rows of shark teeth in order for it to be scary.
Pennywise is omnipotent in a way. You can't kill him. At one point he is impaled through his head and this just temporarily slows him down a bit. He also is not constricted by space. He is able to manipulate machinery as is evidenced where he takes control of the kids photo slide show and not only controls how quickly they are moving from one photo to the next but magically changes the slides so that he is actually in all the pictures too. He can also control your brain and make you see things that are not there.
I'm not saying this sequence wasn't scary because it was. However, if his ultimate objective is to kill the kids and he has complete command over time and space, why not just get to it already? Why toy with them? Perhaps over the millennia of focusing on tormenting children he prefers to mess about and torment pre teens a bit before consuming them in his massive underground lair that no one has managed to discover despite the fact that it is pretty easily accessed.
The movie was largely enjoyed by the critics and it has around an 80% "good" rating on major online film databases. I guess I disagree with the masses again on this one. Plus, even if you aren't familiar with the book it is another one of those films where of course the good guys are going to win. Other than things jumping out at you there really isn't anything terribly shocking in this film.
I suppose if you wanted to traumatize your kids the imagery will be nightmare inducing, so at least we have that.
I'm giving it reasonable marks for having a good art department and some of the scenes (particularly the ones involving water) were quite tense and well filmed.
5 / 10