IT (2017) Review: Best One Yet, 7/7 knives

Hey there, Peter here again. Today I am going to be covering what I have often considered the best horror film to date: IT 2017. This is an example of how the right director and direction can lead to great results without going too far from the material it is based on.

Now I do want to mention this is just part of a full review. Part 2 will be covering IT Chapter 2 that was released in 2019. You don’t need to read the reviews in order, but it would make more sense for you if you haven’t for whatever reason watched the films. One last thing, for those who subscribe to our patron, IT Chapter 2 will be released early for those who are interested. Just to help us out here with reviewing and also growing our site. Otherwise, Chapter 2 will release the week after this review goes up for all of our readers. For free, of course. With all that being said, let us cover the masterpiece that is IT 2017.

Now I believe when I said IT, all of you or most of you recognized the name. The clown himself, Pennywise, was conveyed so convincingly here thanks to the great actor Bill Skarsgard. Not to say the other actors didn’t also do a fantastic job of bringing their characters to life, as they did a wonderful job. Bill just happened to be the one that, to me, brought the greatest convincing of a character in almost all of cinema. Every scene with Pennywise feels like it could happen and never feels out of character for the demon. I will say that they sort of shy away from the kills, not completely, but this is something that it’s sequel does far better. How are the kills that we do see though? It’s like I already said, fantastic. They manage to make them look real and yet just terrifying enough to snap you out of reality. The creativity is a little stag I’ll admit and gets a tad repetitive once Pennywise is fully shown to the audience later in the movie, however this isn’t a huge issue as the scares overall do carry past this flaw. Another minor flaw I have overall, not a big one is how the characters interact with each other. This is something that was wrong with the book and it carries here, the characters make fun of each other and poke fun but often it feels as though they had just met. IT Chapter 2 does another better job here as at the very least it has some flashbacks to compensate, though the actors had aged so it equalises with poor cgi (a problem with that film as a whole). Speaking of that, CGI is really good here. Some scenes do show a lackluster amount, but not the entire film, especially the beginning scene with Georgie and Pennywise. The beginning itself deserves credit from me, I love the introduction to not just Derry but Pennywise and how the film is going to treat its scares throughout the rest of the film. The length is also at a reasonable 2 hours and 15 minutes long, very respectable here and almost never feels like it drags out that time unlike chapter 2 which is a rant not worth discussing here.

Anyways, let us talk about characters. The film mostly focuses on Bill, and for good reasons that I will talk about in the spoilers section of the review. We do meet his other friends including Eddie (played by Jack Grazer), Richie (Finn Wolfhard from Stranger Things), Stanley (Wyatt Oleff), and later on Mike (Chosen Jacob), Ben (Jeremy Taylor), and Beverly (Sophia Lillis) . All of them play their characters well enough, not many complaints here. They are introduced pretty well here too, though if you want more backstory for the main crew you will have had to read the old and new book as they give a lot of context to just after the beginning of the film. I’d be lying to all of you though if I didn’t admit the fact that I absolutely despise Richie, particularly his arrogance. Ironically he is the most hypocritical of all the members of the group and you either know what I am talking about or you’ll read about it optionally in the spoilers section.

We do near the spoilers section but before we head in I do want to give my final key thoughts (spoiler free) of the film series as a whole and what it did well and didn’t (there will be another one at the end with spoilers in mind to allow for me to give my real opinions):

The film has a great length and should keep most entertained, with great visuals that tend to be great most of the time but does have low points.

The characters are all played well, with better performances from Pennywise (Bill Skarsguard) in particular. That is opinionated though, you might think the opposite.

I do wish that the film elaborated on the context of the film more, but luckily the next film does go far more in depth with all the characters and even Pennywise!

Warning: We now head to spoilers, if you have not seen the film OR read the book, you have been warned. This contains spoilers for IT, IT Chapter 2, IT (2017), and the book series.

The story begins with a thunderstorm in the background, which normally would be a cliche but thankfully the characters aren’t at all boring like the setting. Bill lays in his bed sick as a dog, which of course matches our current time of viruses going around and such. His little brother, Georgie, likes to sail newspaper boats and is busy making one with Bill. They even give it a name, S.S Georgie; very original. Anyways, while they are doing this the film gives us amazing cinematography to show the environment and the lighting. This movie clearly invested it’s budget well, which is to be expected given it’s 35 million dollars. We see the basement where Georgie travels down and perhaps gives us the first hint that Pennywise was hunting him, as Georgie sees a pair of eyes that just happens to turn into broken lights when he takes a closer look. The parents just do nothing in this movie so I’m going to ignore them for the purpose of continuing the review. That is also again a point they could and should have at least mentioned, but I suppose not. This is a weak point with IT as a series, not mentioning these minor things that especially weakened the mini series in 1990 (not including the outrageous 3 HOURS and 15 minute length of that series). Past this, Georgie goes outside and without Billy for once due to his illness. This was Pennywise’ time and he certainly took advantage. S.S Georgie set sail..for about a few minutes until it sank into a sewer. The infamous kill and the best kill of the entire film occurs here. With some convincing and the promise of delicious popcorn, Georgie reaches down for his boat from Pennywise. Big. Mistake. What we see next is what I would describe as a chainsaw mouth, chewing off Georgie’s arm and taking him down below! Then..title credits.

Ok can I mention again how good the beginning is? I love the set up, the music, the ambiance, everything! Such a great film. Moving on, some time passes to where Bill still hasn’t moved on (ironically) and thinks he has located where Georgie could be. This would ultimately lead to the finding of Pennywise’ hideout, leading me to also believe Bill was supposed to be the smart one in the group but Eddie was so..??

Anyways, since his father doesn’t believe him he decides to instead ask his crew to go along with him and it goes about as well as you think it would. Eddie acts in disgust and honestly acts as petty as you can get. Regardless, they go anyway after arguing for a while, and it shows us once again another location that is revisited for the second kill of the film. Can you guess who it’ll be? They go through and Bill happens to step on the shoe of a dead girl who went missing that day, the foreshadowing is incredible in this film I love it. Right after, Eddie and Richie pull the f*ck this and got the hell out of the sewers. Not willing to go in himself, Bill yielded and went back where we meet Ben. Did Ben run into them? Nope. He got beat and scarred, and just happened to (and I’m not kidding) fell into them through the bushes. He was getting chased by the bullies of the school, and managed to lose one of them near the sewers while the others followed Ben and met them across the river. Get what I’m getting at? The bully wandered through the sewers until he saw the girl that had gone missing, leading him to get trapped and..well.. Eaten. This was my favorite kill as it genuinely scared the lights outta me and showed SOME of it. Not all of it, but most of it. We get past this where the bullies and the ‘loser’s club’ are both across the river. Each staring eye to eye, kid to kid. One thing leads to another, and a rock war begins. The losers managed to get away while landing a shot that perhaps turned the lead bully, Henry, to go to Pennywise. This led to an interesting plot of Pennywise using Henry as a weapon, I really liked this and chapter 2 further elaborated on this.

Afterwards the losers were injured, mostly ben, and needed supplies badly. Conveniently they were near the drug store, so they all opt to go in while Richie stays behind to uh..break the ice. Yeah it was sorta funny but not that funny.

We finally get to the last piece of the puzzle, Beverly. She happens to bump into the crew and also just happens to let them off with the drugs, since she could of course see they were desperate and the parents in Derry are awful. Beverly then opts to come with them and meets up with the crew where they then explain what happened to her, leading to some laughter and a light tone for a little while of the film. Pennywise then commences his attack on all of them, each with a unique scare dedicated to them which I really appreciated for the detail and effort the director and others did. I don’t have the time to go into each one, but most of them are in the trailer so no need to go much further into it. Being exposed at their age was inevitably going to have a major effect on them, causing Richie to FINALLY point out how illogical it is for them to be chasing a pipe dream when Georgie had to have been dead by that point. Bill, being a sour puss, starts up a fight. The group turns into a civil war, with only Bill and Beverly being together and the others siding with Richie. Unfortunately we get a time skip, but it does lead to a great scene so I’ll let it slide. At this point, Henry was near broken..this was the breaking point. He was practicing shooting, until his father caught him in the act before Henry killed a cat. He humiliates him, then heads back inside. This was too much, and Pennywise didn’t miss a beat. He went ahead and sent a gift..a knife. One thing leads to another, tv encouragement, and Henry kills his father with a stab to the neck. Henry was long gone now.

Bill sees on the news that Henry had killed his father and just knew pennywise had something to do with it, he had to be stopped. Beverly had her issues with her father so while she dealt with him, he would go reassemble the group.

Beverly however, would nearly meet the same fate Georgie did…

Pennywise kidnaps her during the reassembling, allowing him to wind her up in his glowing lights and start some ungodly process. The group realizes this and question whether to go, but Bill gives a speech and they go ahead. As they explore, they were wondering if they should go back only to meet Henry who cuts the rope. No going back now.

They head into Pennywise’ lair, the camera once again being great shows us the lair in its entirety. Ben splits up and finds Beverly, calling the group to her. He tries everything, before kissing her right on the mouth like he always wanted! Great..

Ignoring that though, she wakes up. Bill on the other hand, went off on his own and thinks he found Georgie. He is almost convinced until the group finds him, handing him the piss poor weapon that should tell if its Pennywise. They were right. Georgie transforms into Pennywise who now proceeds, with lack of better words, gets ass whooped from being surrounded. They were no longer afraid and used it to defeat the demon who retreats to a well, falling while screaming as Georgie. However..this would not be the last of Pennywise.

We finally get to the end with the group all surrounded, having fun and talking about what they had just done. Some of them had some fear, but forgot it in exchange to defeat him. We get a nice scene of them all having fun, before leaving for the end of summer, leaving us just Bill and Beverly. They kiss, and ends the movie at that.

WOO ok that was long.

Spoilers are finally done, so here are my final thoughts.

IT 2017 did everything right and more, without leaving a lacking amount of something. I can easily dish out a full 7/7 knives. Perfect horror with a great story is what is a 7/7 for me and it deserves it.

Key points: Great cinematography

Great story

Great acting

Some questionable context, more context could have improved the film