Review: IT: Chapter One (2017)

We love our Stephen King here, so it is only natural that we run out to see this adaptation of one of our favorite of the Stephen King books (the less said about the other one, the better).

And director Andy Muschietti does a fairly good job.  The movie is far from perfect - and could have benefited from some judicious cutting of subplots - but we do get a fairly creepy, fast-paced movie about a killer entity that takes the form of a clown.

The movie follows the Losers Club, a misfit group of preteens who bond over the summer as they are threatened by the malevolent Pennywise.  Now, this is the crux of challenge of this movie:  You need not just a few, but 7 (arguably 10) good, strong child actors, plus an older actor who can carry the scares as the villain.

Now, while all of the child actors are strong, they might have effectively hidden the shortcomings of some by condensing the story's focus down to 3 of the children:  Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), Beverly (Sophia Lillis), and Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor).  Now, for those familiar with the book, this is something short of a travesty - as King does creates several great characters out of the children - but it is somewhat necessitated given that even chopping the book in half, you have something like 600 pages to squeeze into a two hour movie.

However, they give enough other business to the other actors (Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Wyatt Olef as Richie, Mike, Eddie, and Stan respectively) that it reads more as a missed opportunity than a true crime against the novel.

Of the child actors, special mention must go to Sophia Lillis as Beverly - easily my pick for best in show amongst the children - and Finn Wolfhard as Richie.  To me, both really captured the characters from the book, although the screenplay lets down the former by damseling her in the latter part of the movie.

So, the elephant in the room is Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise the Clown.  Let me get this out the way:  Tim Curry will forever own this role.  Nothing anyone will ever do will take it away from him, so a comparison is unfair to any actor playing the part.  Having said that, Skarsgard does an excellent job in the role, playing Pennywise with a weird, off-putting vocalization that on its own manages to create a tension of just what Pennywise is about to do.

The CGI works very well for the most part, with only one scene where it 'shows' - but Muschietti makes the smart decision to have that play into the scare.

Part of what makes the novel great is how King builds the city of Derry itself into an extension of the malevolence of Pennywise, and to make the movie work, some of that has to transfer to the screen.  Muschietti manages to build some great setpieces that help create this mood (the house on Neibolt is right out of the book), and the way he films some of the parents (Eddie's mother in particular) create the meanness necessary for Derry to work.

The biggest critique I would give would be the treatment of Beverly from book to screen.  While they do make her one of the leaders of the group and arguably the bravest of the children, this is undermined by a late-movie MacGuffin to get the group back together at her expense.

The movie could have also improved by either cutting out the bullies entirely (so little time is spent on them that they feel like an afterthought), or by tightening several of the 'adult' scenes that seem to meander when the point has already been made.

But these are minor quibbles from an unexpectedly strong film.  

9 out of 10