Warning - this will probably be a long review as I have a lot of feelings about this film. Plus, like a lot of people I really don’t like clowns so I was worried at first about how scary this would be!

Alright where do I start...I liked the original adaptation (1990) starring Tim curry, although quite long and drawn out, I thought it was creepy and was a decent horror film. With this 2017 remake however, I left the cinema feeling disappointed and with a general 'it was ok' feeling towards it. 

To be fair, I haven’t yet read IT by Stephen king and I know that once I do, I will probably hate both adaptations. It is fair to say that film adaptations rarely get it right, but when they are done properly or to the effect of being mostly true to the books (the Harry Potter series for example) they can be incredibly successful.

Anyhow, onto what I thought about this film. Bringing the story into the 21st Century, I was interested to see what it would be like. Looking creepy and mysterious from the trailer, the young cast were promising and Bill skarsgard’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown looked terrifying. Going to the cinema at at 22:50, I was ready to be scared. It's hard to pin down what went wrong with this film. Yes, the young actors were good and the town of Derry was depicted perfectly as a town you would never want to live in but although it was visually impressive at parts, I felt that once again a film used far too much unnecessary CG. 

When I talked to my partner afterwards about my thoughts on this, he mentioned that in that sense it could be compared to the book. The filmmakers were simply replicating the mystery and out-of-this world visuals the best they could, but I thought that it came off looking too fake. 

It began promising, with a shot-for-shot scene (to the original), when Georgie loses his paper boat and first meets Pennywise.  When you meet the clown in the heavily CG'd sewer however, he has a very odd voice (not that he is meant to sound human but this comes off as very strange) and more distracting then scary. The whole film follows suit, with scenes that are set up to be frightening but lack the true creepiness or good jump scares and are replaced by over the top heavy CG'd jump scares / the use of jumpy music.

There is also a very odd scene when an over CG'd Pennywise dances creepily in front of a young girl. But anyhow, I felt that this film had promise but missed the mark by relying on modern horror film tropes such as unnecessary jump scares. Some scenes were scary, but overall it just lacked in the entertainment department. I will however say that I would like to see this again, and I may change my mind but for now I will say that it was simply nothing to write home about.