Movie Review: Scary is not what 'It' is

Warner Bros.

It (2017, directed by Andy Muschietti. U.S.A., English, Color, 135 minutes) Imagine planning a party for someone. You get all of the close friends and family together for months to prepare for a great memory for everyone. It's been promoted all over social media while people gab with each other in special messaging sessions and event walls to get everything ready. The day of the event is here and everyone is waiting for that special honoree, the space overflowing with excitement in anticipation of the big "SURPRISE!" burst to greet them. When the honoree comes, they say "you took me away from my day for this shit?"

Well, that's kind of how "It" comes off, the first feature film adaptation of Stephen King's massive novel. There was so much buzz built up around this movie from Warner Brothers that it was so much fun for them to tease the public about the movie that they forgot to make a movie-going event worth showing up for. Warner liked to plan the party, but there was no reason for us to go.

The creepy tale about a demonic clown named Pennywise tormenting a young group of kids in Derry, Maine is brimming with too much noise, music, cheap scares and no restraint of style. (When you start seeing too many dutch-angle shots you know it is overkill as a scary foreshadow and not an original composition used sparingly to make you pay attention as to why the shot was framed as such.) It reduces King's depth to a run-of-the-mill "horror" movie that delights in making the audiences startle from too many obvious jump scares but doesn't form a cohesive story to thread those "scares" together. The film performs almost like a series of vignettes with dead-end events that show something happening, but never anything that makes us feel grappled with terror.

At its most interesting core is the Losers Club, made up of seven outcasts (six boys and one girl). I was so fascinated by these young actors and the characters they played that the horror story seemed like a bad add-on to what they were trying to understand about themselves and the world. Really shining through was Sophia Lillis as Beverly, the gorgeously friendly girl brimming with charm and who looks like a very young and immensely mature Amy Adams. She knows how to hold her own against the foul-mouthed, innocent and sexually curious young boys in the club.

And as much as I enjoyed the scenes of the young kids there was a tonal imbalance in the film between the spirited coming-of-age story and the incredibly tired, predictable horror story. At one point there was a rock fight between the Losers and bullies that plays like a comically vicious '80s music video. I understand that beating It is part of the teenagers coming-of-age, but that scene didn't belong in an already weird balance of self-reflection and cheap horror movie. However, one character had the best line when he said, "Who invited Molly Ringwald?"

For as much as I loved learning about the Losers club is how much I hated the horror "movie" parts. If you're going to make a scary movie, and one where the source material comes from Stephen King for Christ's sake, make it good! Cheap scares and a soundtrack that never allows natural adrenaline to build was too frequent, too predictable and too mundane. The audience I saw the movie with jumped and screamed at every part the studio hoped they would, but marketing such a movie to seem anything more than "Saw" or "The Conjuring" was an error to make the public feel like they're getting more than what the ticket price is worth.

Rating: D+