The town of "Derry" is witnessing the disappearance of its children one by one, after searching for them only parts of their bodies that have been eaten and cut are discovered, which will prompt a group of seven children to search for answers about the disappearance of their friends and fear that the same thing will catch them. This search journey takes them to meet a frightening and strange creature, which takes the form of a tumbler as its form, a tumbler whose history is full of murder and kidnapping that reaches back centuries of the past.
The film is directed by Andy Muschietti and is based on the novel by American writer Stephen King under the same title.
But is the movie really terrifying? I don't know how people got to confuse a horror movie with a normal movie! With the exception of that clown Benny Wise, I don't think the film deserves to be called terrifying. Yes, there are some surprising and somewhat frightening clips, but in general it remains a very normal movie.
How could it be a terrifying movie when most of the events take place during the day? We all know that night is the main pillar of the success of any horror movie. In this movie, most of the events take place around a group of children running away and flocking in the daytime, trying to uncover the reason for the disappearance of the children.
The only thing that gave the movie added value was the acrobat, we wouldn't say it was terrifying but its character was interesting and unique. Swedish actor Bill Skarsgård who played the role deserves a round of applause, a terrible performance. I think the only thing that will push you to watch the movie is that acrobat, otherwise the film is kinda boring.
On the other hand, I suspect if they had taken advantage of the humor and comic aspect of the movie, it would have been better, and focus only on making the movie darker and scarier. The comic shots did not add any value, but rather made the viewer alienated from the film because it was not in keeping with the events.
The other problem of the film is the writing, the script was not accurate in terms of description, how can a horror movie scare you and most of its events take place during the day? As for the sequence and sequence of events, everything is good, from the point of view of the time period, it is faultless, the film was neither very long nor short.
In terms of directing, the film was very professional, the director, Andy Muschietti, was able to control and control the technical side, such as the way of filming, lighting, and the selection of excellent cadres in parallel with the artistic side, like the performance of the actors, which was professional even though the main actors are only children.
In general, the main idea is great, but it was not implemented well. We know that the film is based on the story of the American writer "Stephen King", which is considered one of his best books, but it was not used well in converting it into a movie. There is also an old TV series with the same title based on the book that came out I guess in the 1990s but I haven't watched it, so I can't compare it to this movie.
If as we said, performing that acrobat is the only interesting thing about this film, and the only thing that will save him artistically, otherwise, a very normal movie.