Film Review - IT (2017)

IT is based off of the novel by Stephen King and concerns the tale of 7 kids known as the Losers as each don’t have a lot of friends (the kids are played by Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs and Jack Dylan Grazer) but they have each other and all of them see visions of a terrifying clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard) who likes to pray on their worst fears in life.

IT is an okay horror film that is mainly lifted up due to the strength of its young cast all of whom are terrific both as individual young actors and as an ensemble group they hold your attention, have good chemistry and you come to root for them and want them to succeed plus the film had a couple of nice references to the 1988/89 setting that made me smile and their side of the story these young kids who are bullied and become this close knit group was a very interesting story.

Sadly the horror aspects of the film feel very very over produced and all the hallmarks are on show:

- The jump scares
- The loud soundtrack that goes DA DUM!
- The crew splits up and then starts to get picked off
- The dark corridors where the crew gets lost
- Someone tries to disrupt the crew’s plan

And so on and so on and after a while it really started to bother me and I begun to check my watch just waiting for all the jump scares and loud noises and quick cuts of monstrous Pennywise to end and all of it as I mentioned just felt so over the top that it did not feel all that scary and sometimes for me at least all you need is a good actor being let off the leash to be scary.

And we have had that example this year in James McAvoy in Split who was both scary and fun and without the need for quick cuts, jump scares and loud noises on the soundtrack M Night Shymalan simply put his trust in him and you only had to look at what he could do soon he shall show the world how powerful the Horde can be.

I’ve gone off track so I will wrap up this review here in short the kids are great but the horror stuff feels over produced, 2 out of 5.