'It' (2017)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’d probably heard about the remake of ‘It’ - a supernatural horror movie once made as a two-part TV show back in the 90s. The main antagonist, Pennywise is a demonic clown that is terrifying the quiet town of Maine.

With much hype built around it- countless trailers, promos and a sequel, the studio definitely has high hopes for this flick and to me, they are totally winning. Is it better than the original? Probably. ‘It’ is much darker, with astounding performances from the young kids that are trying to relate Pennywise and the disappearances of their friends.

Set in 1989, the group of friends in the Losers’ Club (due to them being bullied by their high school enemy) were having their summer break and despite the numbers of children missing and curfew executed, explored the sewage where they think the bodies of the missing kids would end up. The strength of ‘It’ is the colourful characters drawn by Stephen King which is basically our group of friends riding around on our bikes just like back in the good old days thus making us very hard not to relate to any one of the characters.

Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise works wonders. Although he was not given much dialogue, his presence and smile was enough to keep you on the edge of your seat and leave you questioning “WTF just happened?” Oh and there are lots and lots of WTF moments scattered throughout the film.

But the most important question- Is ‘It’ scary? It depends. There are a few scenes that are horrifying and heart-stopping enough for me (and I’ve watched enough horror movies that I rarely got scared anymore) but I felt like the weakness of this movie is that most of the haunting happened during the day which stripped off the horror essence but also left the impression that there is really no safe time when it comes to Pennywise- he could come to you anytime especially when you least expected it.

All in all, it is a decent horror movie, perfectly made and its R-rated status was fully used for your horror delights.

Rating: 8/10

Watch out for: That bloody scene which reminds me a lot of the one scene in The Nightmare on Elm Street.

Watch this if you like: Stranger Things (for its 80s feels and the characters)