I respect Stephen King. As a horror or I respect his genius and his gift, I don't however thing he should allow terrible movies be made of his awesome books. For example THE DARK TOWER, even with an awesome cast, did not live up to the amazing setup of the series. Now I know that not everyone is a fan of the original SHINING by Kubrick, but if you look at it and recognize the cinematic brilliance of it you can appreciate it for what it is. I did also watch the television mini-series of THE SHINING and thought it was just awful, just a poor project with terrible acting. I mean, you can't beat a blood filled elevator. So, while I love the mini-series of IT, I thought I should give the movie a chance, and hope for the best. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed.
This movie was nothing if not laughable. The child actors were all okay, however the brutality of the actors seemed a little over the top and honestly the bully was more frightening than Pennywise. There was not as much development to the stories of all of the child actors as there could have been, and I felt like some of them fell flat as they tried to bring the film up to date and placing it in the 1980's. The movie tried hard to place things in a house that was only introduced once and didn't seem to be that frightening, nor was there a story about why the house was supposed to be scary. In all honesty there was an attempt to give the house a story, but it wasn't developed well, nor was it interesting enough that I cared enough to remember.
The biggest issue I had was with the clown, Pennywise. I have seen Bill Sarsgard in several other things, including as a vampire in HEMLOCK GROVE, and I do not think he was the best actor for this character. His voice was not good for the character, not creepy, and the high pitched laughter was more annoying than it was frightening. I would have like to see someone else, closer to Tim Curry's caliper, play the character. Someone more developed would have been good. Also I don't feel as if the clown was used enough to scare the audience. As it was the movie was not frightening at all.
I don't know if this might be an unpopular opinion but I didn't care for this movie. It wasn't scary as a supernatural horror, nor was it suspenseful or frightening as a psychological horror. I am interested to see what will happen in the second volume in this,and hope that it finds its footing in the second version (which I hope is with the adults), since for me this was pretty bland and the computer graphics (Pennywise opening his mouth to show rows and rows of teeth was more comical that scary) were laughable and didn't add to the horror elements that I longed for in this movie.