Kurtis Belanger’s review published on Letterboxd:
IT was always ripe for a remake, the book is great, and the TV miniseries while decent, was not the closest adaptation of the original book. This is obviously only one half of the story, but this is already not only one of the best films of 2017, but it's one of the best Stephen King adaptions, and it's a damn good horror movie on it's own right.
For all that the trailers have shown, this film is about kids and their innocence being lost. Everyone probably can chart when they stopped being the happy go lucky child in their life and became more hardned to the world around them, IT is that for the kids, a catalyst for their transformation. Mind you this involves gruesome kills and horrifying antics, but that's really what the film is about.
It's great that this is set in the 80's. It makes sense because it harkens back to films like Goonies and other 80's horror movies that starred kids, but it also works because in the 80's child abductions became a huge thing; any child of the 80's/90's knows of the paranoia and fear that emerged from this idea that kids disappeared, IT capitalizes on that.
It's not all horror though, the film is also quite funny, and works in humor from many different sources. IMO the best horror movies also have moments of comedic brevity, IT does that very well. Most of the maon cast have laugh out loud moments with Ritchie spewing Dick jokes like they're a second language.
One minor complaint I have is Beverly. In the book and TV movie she is much more independent and strong. In fact she outshines the boys in many ways. In this movie she's relegated to the dansel in distress and/or the romantic interest. I wish she had more to her and this was probably my bigfest complaint.
The cast are all great, from Pennywise to the Loser's Club, everyone here is perfectly cast. Bill Skarsgaard easily is the best interpretation of Pennywise yet.
Whenever I review films, I look at how well a film achieve's its goals. IT aims to be a horror comedy about the loss of childhood innocence juxtaposed with an evil clown terrifying them. It achieves this and goes well beyond that. This is easily the best horror movie in 2017 for me by a long shot (sorry Get Out)
Tremble: Bonus Episode
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