At around 3 AM on Saturday, September 23rd.  I was laying in bed with nothing but terror on my mind.  I was afraid that a creepy clown was going to appear at the foot of my bed and drag me into the void. Around three hours earlier, I had gone to see the highest grossing horror film of all time, Stephen King’s IT.  I left the theater with a dropped jaw and fear that I myself was going to get maimed by something I’m afraid of.  Usually I am not somebody who gets scared by spooks as simple as death, clowns, and or women with distorted faces and sharp teeth who play the flute, but this movie left me shook.

Unlike the first adaptation of the story, this chapter focused mainly on the kids as they first take on the sadistic supernatural force they call, “IT”.  After the mysterious disappearance of Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott), children all over the town of Derry, Maine start to go missing.  By taking the form of ‘Pennywise the Dancing Clown’, “IT” (Bill Skarsgard) preys on these children by shapeshifting into what they fear most.

Georgies older brother, Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher)  will not accept his little brother’s fate, and sets out with his self titled gang ‘The Losers Club. The club includes talker Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard), hypochondriac Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer), new kid on the block Ben Hanscom ( Jeremy Ray Taylor), home-schooled Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs), Rabbi’s son Stanley Uris (Wyatt Oleff), and tough girl Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis). The group sets out to explore the sewer drains in search of Georgie, but they get themselves involved in something far more horrific. Along with the clown, the children are also tormented by a group of bullies.  Sociopath Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) and his group of friends harass the kids throughout the movie, as he was being coerced by “IT” to do very bad things.

But besides the creepy shape shifting demon that eats on people’s horror fantasies and the creepy homicidal bully, the movie has a deeper meaning that makes IT even more frightening.  The underlying fear that each of these children had and why they had it. The movie looks into each of these kids personal lives, and it give you a good idea of what bothers them the most and why it does.  This movie does a fantastic job of putting you in their shoes and giving you an idea of what these children were going through.  

IT may have been labeled a horror movie, but there were a lot of comedic aspects to the film as well.  The film was able to balance the funny with the scary by using plenty of innuendos and jokes, as well as the kids personalities.  People may think that they used too many curse words for being kids, but it’s not all the time that you see thirteen year olds with the vocabularies of a twenty year old.  

Another super cool thing about the movie is the special effects and makeup. Instead of seeing actors, you were seeing the characters themselves. The movie went very into detail when it came to special effects and making things that could never possibly happen, happen. From floating children, to giant monster mouths, the effects were believable and put the movie on a whole another level of spook.

There was absolutely nothing about the movie that I disliked or thought was cheesy. The movie is absolutely worth the two hours and fifteen minutes it runs. From start to finish, I was on the edge of my seat. This movie is something that will make you cry, it will make you scared, it will make you laugh, but it will also let you leave the theater with a sane mindset.  You might be a little shaken up, but it’s all worth it. I overall give IT a solid 10/10 and will definitely see it again.