'IT' which I saw earlier this week is the Stephen King penned remake of the 1990 two part television mini-series, based on his acclaimed and best selling 1986 horror story 'It'. Since 2009 this film has been in development, with Cary Fukunaga first announced to Direct and Co-Write the film, but subsequently dropping out in 2015 due to disagreements with Production Company, New Line, over the direction that he wanted to take the film in. Subsequently Argentinian Director, Andres Muschietti was announced to Direct, whose previous credit was his debut feature with 2013's supernatural horror offering 'Mama' with Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. 'It' was released in the US last week too, and cost a budgeted US$35M, and has so far grossed US$218M breaking numerous Box Office records in the process too. The film has been critically acclaimed as perhaps the best and most faithful to the source material of all Stephen King's works thus far committed to celluloid. As the end credits tell us, this is 'IT - Chapter One' - the first instalment in a two part series.
The film kicks off with a rain soaked day in October 1988 in the small community of Derry, Maine with young teenager Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher) making a sailboat out of note paper and waxing it to make it waterproof, for his young seven year old brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) to go and play with in the pouring rain. Georgie releases the boat into the gutter and it sails away at a rate faster than he can keep up, eventually washing down into a storm drain.
As young Georgie peers after his lost boat into the narrow drain inlet, he is startled by a man dressed as a clown who introduces himself as 'Pennywise, the Dancing Clown' (Bill Skarsgard). The clown states that the storm washed the circus, and him, down into the sewers, and he offers the young lad his boat back, saying that he should reach in to take it. As Georgie reaches in to the drain to retrieve his boat, his arm is bitten off at the shoulder by Pennywise. Falling backwards out of shock, and scrambling around in the pouring rain, Georgie is dragged backwards by his legs into the storm drain . . . never to be seen again, with his blood quickly being washed away by the torrents of rainwater.
Fast forward to June 1989 and its the last day of term at Derry High School. Bill and a few of his best mates Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard), Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer) and Stanley Uris (Wyatt Oleff) run into school bully Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) and his gang, who are intent on picking on the much younger lads and making their life a misery. At the same time Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis) is picked on for being the school slut and has a confrontation in the female toilets with another highly opinionated ringleader of a pack of girls. Recovering from this and exiting the school building she runs into Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), a new kid at school, who is also bullied because of his weight problem, but he harbours a secret crush on Beverly. The pair chat for a while, she signs his year book, and they go their separate ways.
Later we see Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs) making a delivery to a local Butcher's shop. He has a close terrifying encounter with Pennywise before nearly getting mowed down by Henry Bowers in his car. Bill meanwhile has a theory that Georgie was washed down into Derry's intricate sewer system and would have washed out in an area known as The Barrens. He enlists the help of his mates to check out the exiting storm drain at The Barrens to look for signs of Georgie. Ben visits the school library even though it is now officially the Summer Holidays and studies up on the history of old Derry, learning of the towns mystery with unsolved murders, unexplained disappearances, and strange goings on that have been occurring for centuries. He is lured down into the library basement by a dancing red balloon gliding across the floor and has a close encounter too with Pennywise in the form of a rampaging badly burnt headless boy.
Stan later has a terrifying ordeal with the clown who assumes the identity of an animated painting of a disfigured woman that has always given him the creeps; and Beverly hears the distant voices of children calling up to her from the plug hole in her bathroom sink. Upon closer examination she is held fast by her own cut hair as it wraps around her head, her arms and her legs and steadily pulls her in towards the plug hole before an eruption of blood coats her from head to toe and the entire bathroom too. Later that night Bill is awakened by strange noises elsewhere in the house and is lured down into the basement where he confronts Georgie lurking in a corner . . . but it's not Georgie, it's Pennywise from whom he narrowly escapes back up the stairs.
Some weeks later 'The Losers Club', as the now gang of seven affectionately refer to themselves as, have a moment of clarity as they realise that they are all being besieged by the same horrific entity, who seems to feed off their own fears, insecurities and anxieties, and turns these against them. While in Bill's garage viewing photographic slides of old Derry superimposed over a map of current Derry, Ben announces that there is a 27 year pattern going back to the turn of the century of unexplained and mysterious occurrences in their town resulting in death, destruction and disappearances. The slideshow they are watching of the old and new town maps indicates that Derry's Well is the central hub from which the towns sewer systems branches out. That Well is located in the ramshackle abandoned old house on Neibolt Street, and it is this conduit that allows Pennywise to move about town quickly and unseen. 
Bill, Richie and Eddie venture upto the Neibolt Street house while the others stand guard outside. Pennywise attempts to pick the three boys off one by one, by luring them into different parts of the house with varying visions. Eddie falls through a hole in the floor to a room below, fracturing his arm in the process. Pennywise emerges from a fridge, and is about to kill Eddie when he is impaled through the head by a metal spike courtesy of Beverly, causing the clown to make a hasty retreat down the Well, but not before slashing Ben in the stomach with his clawed hands. 
Outside the house Eddie's over protective and over bearing mother arrives and quickly whisks him way, horrified by the boys antics. Richie, Stan and Mike elect to have no more to do with Bill and his plans to locate Georgie and thwart Pennywise, because its all too dangerous and its the Summer Holidays and they are supposed to be enjoying themselves. Later on, Beverly is abducted by Pennywise, after she knocks out her father for fear of being raped by him. Bill visits the house to find her unconscious father on the bathroom floor with blood oozing from his head, and deduces that Pennywise has Beverly. He quickly rallies The Losers to mount a search and rescue mission.
Back at the Neibolt Street house, The Losers gain entry down the Well and emerge in a labyrinth of sewer tunnels. Stan is separated from the others and Pennywise attacks, but is fended off when the others arrive just in time. They emerge into a huge cavernous underground cooling tower which is filled with what appears to be a mountain of rotting circus equipment, the clothes and personal belongings of Pennywise's victims going back centuries, and hovering mid way up the tower are the suspended floating corpses of missing children. They rescue Beverly from her state of Pennywise induced suspended animation, just as Georgie emerges saying to Bill that it's time to go home. Bill is at first taken in, but then realises that Georgie really is dead, and recognising the ruse shoots Georgie through the head with a captive bolt pistol brought along by Mike, temporarily on 'loan' from his Grandfathers sheep farm. The lifeless body of Georgie then transforms into Pennywise.
The group descend on the clown beating it with a baseball bat, sticks, metal rods and whatever they can find lying around. Pennywise overpowers them taking Bill hostage and offers to trade them Bill for sparing the lives of all the other Losers. Richie seemingly agrees and then turns the tables on Pennywise, which gives The Losers the opportunity to brutally attack the clown and free their friend. Pennywise is mortally wounded, and Bill states that they are no longer afraid of him, that he cannot turn their fears against them, and so he is powerless now against them. The clown backs into the lip of a deep pit and starts to dissolve before falling into oblivion. Bill discovers the yellow raincoat of his younger brother with his name etched on the inside and breaks down, with his friends all comforting him. One month later when the dust has settled and a degree of normalcy has returned to Derry, The Losers gather and make a blood oath to return to Derry 27 years from now, if It comes back and terrorises the town, and that they will destroy it once and for all.
'It' reminded me to some degree of 'Stand By Me' and the recent popular Netflix series 'Stranger Things' with common themes running through them. This film has some genuine jump scares to keep the tension and the suspense ramped up, and equally some moments of levity with laugh out loud moments, largely delivered by the fast talking potty mouthed Richie Tozier. The young cast are well matched and deliver convincing characterisation, and Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise delivers on the maniacal menace with aplomb, although as the film progresses and we see more of The Dancing Clown, the more predictable he becomes and therefore less scary. At 135 minutes running time the film moves along at a good pace and maintains the attention with equal measure of frights and early teenage coming of age emotion. A solid horror offering that does not disappoint given the social media attention the early trailers garnered and the subsequent expectations. Bring on 'It - Chapter Two', which is set up nicely with a post credits audio teaser.
-Steve, at Odeon Online-
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