IT (2017)

GENERAL INFORMATION

Release Info: 7 September 2017

Director: Andy Muschietti
Writer: Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga
Running Time: 135 Minutes

Staring:  Bill Skarsgård, Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer and Wyatt Oleff

Rating? R

SPOILERS? NO for the most part but if you DON'T want SPOILERS, stop reading when I say SPOILERS!!

REVIEWS

IMDB: 8.3 of 10

RT: Critics: 88% Audience: 91%
MY RATING: 7

STORYLINE

In the town of Derry, the local kids are disappearing one by one, leaving behind bloody remains. In a place known as the Barrens, a group of seven kids are united by their horrifying and strange encounters with an evil clown and their determination to kill IT.

MY REVIEW

This was one of my favorite re-adaptations I've seen in a while. This was a good blend of Horror and Comedy with just enough to keep your eyes interested and your head engaged in the story. 

Thanks to my friend Joe for the SPOILER LADEN review after mine!!

What I DID LIKE about this movie:

• Acting- I RARELY like movies that star massive amounts of children. I am not a fan of them (kids) in general and  that's just a thing for me. But this worked! The child actors acted their little black hearts out for this movie! 
• Cinematography- There was some amazing framing in this movie. There were a few times when the camera would pan out and around to show one of the characters and then a larger empty hall or open field that left an uneasy feeling of emptiness that was unsettling. After I realizing it was Chung-hoon Chung, the same cinematographer as Oldboy and The Handmaiden, I was not surprised
• Score and again, this was not a surprise as Benjamin Wallfisch was the same genius behind Hidden Figures, 12 Years a Slave and V for Vendetta.
• Bill Skarsgård, just like your awesome brother, Alexander Skarsgård, you sir, awe amazing. This was a truly terrifying and entertaining performance.

What I DID NOT LIKE about this movie:

• MIKE HANLON's part was not what I wanted to see at all. He was such a large part of the book and the first movie. His role was parsed out to various people in the new film and I just missed that person!
• It did feel rushed at times. I wanted more of the story and purely more of the 

SPOILERS- SPOLIERS- SPOLIERS

JOE'S REVIEW 

So having recently (within 3 months) reabsorbed the novel, a few things in the movie seemed off. Mainly, that a lot of Mike Hanlon's status and use to the loser's club was absorbed by Ben Hanscom. Mike was the historian of the team. He was the one that made them aware of It as a constant entity and it felt like they intentionally cut him down to a farmer from his original place.

He was also Henry Bowers' biggest target due to racism passed through the family. In the book, Henry Bowers kills Mike's dog in childhood. His family has a running hatred of the Hanlons because they are black and the Bowers blame them for all their failings. The movie skirted this entire subplot. Richie in the books is afraid of werewolves because of a movie he watches with Ben and Bev. This was also skirted in the movie for a fear of clowns, which seems like it was done for convenience. Most notable absence was the "everyone on the team has a purpose" aspect of the losers club. In the book, Bev is the fighter, Mike is the brain, Richie is the support, Stan is highly organized, Bill is the leader, and Eddie is the cautious hypochondriac. They all also take abuse which helps bond them.

Bill is alienated from his family after Georgie's death. Stan gets a lot of anti-Semitic abuse. Eddie is a Munchausen syndrome by proxy child that is constantly watched by his mother who hates the losers. Bev has a similar home life to the film but her mother is present and largely supporting the family on wait staff jobs. Mike gets Henry Bowers' abuse. His aunt, cousins, and Henry pick on Ben. Richie is a large target of Bowers because he talks back. Lastly, Mike does not kill Henry in the book. Henry is traumatized by IT and sent to an asylum after It kills Belch and Criss.

Patrick Hocksteader and Belch Huggins are bigger characters in the book with Patrick being a "rich kid playing with the wrong side of the tracks kids" is a psycho who also has homosexual urges (including jacking Henry off at one point). Some of the gang was written out, Moose Sadler and Vic Criss mainly.

The film did get a lot of things right. The kids are left on their own a lot, except Eddie who has to sneak out most of the time. Stan is the most hesitant of the group in the book because the chaos of It messes with his ordered mind the most. Bill does have a form of PTSD in the book from Georgie's death. Bev's abused home life is more implied than shown in the book. The bond of the losers club is more solid in the book but still captured well. The house on Neibolt Street is almost exactly as pictured in the book. The movie could not really capture a lot of the book because there is a LOT of history and world building in the book. There is more discussion of what IT is and why the town ignores it, leaving the "intentional or accidental" part up for debate.

I would also be remiss if I didn't point out some Easter eggs from the movie. There are multiple references to other King properties in the movie ranging from images on shirts (a car with teeth referencing Christine, multiple turtles referencing both the book and the Dark Tower, the Ford Pinto Eddie's mom drives is the same as the car from Cujo). Another deviation: In the book, the Bowers gang breaks Eddie's arm in retaliation for the rock fight, rather the Neibolt Street house. 

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