it movie review

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

Clowns are creepy no matter what. We can all agree on that, right?

But Pennywise, the dancing clown who tracks down and torments the children of small-town Maine in “It,” is deeply unsettling. At least, he is in the latest incarnation of Stephen King ’s iconic novel. Infamously, Tim Curry ’s take on the character in the 1990 TV miniseries version was so over-the-top, it was laughable—not that you’re looking for understatement in your homicidal clowns.

But what Bill Skarsgard does with the role works well precisely because he doesn’t appear to be laboring so hard to frighten us. He doesn’t vamp it up. He’s coy—he toys with these kids—making his sudden bursts of insane clown hostility that much more shocking.

Even more effective than the horror elements of Argentine director Andy Muschietti ’s adaptation is the unexpected humor he reveals in the story—and, ultimately, the humanity. Finding that combination of tones is such a tricky balance to pull off: the brief lightening of a tense moment with a quick quip, or an earnest monologue in the face of extreme danger. But “It” makes that work nearly every time, thanks to its perfectly calibrated performances from a well-chosen cast.

The kid-bonding parts of the movie are actually stronger than the creepy-clown parts, even though images of that freakish, frilly fiend will be the ones that keep you awake at night. Led by “ Midnight Special ” star Jaeden Lieberher —whose everyman (everykid?) appeal grows with each film—and including a star-making performance from Sophia Lillis as the crew’s lone female member, it’s mostly unknown actors who comprise the film’s so-called “Losers Club.” But their characters are distinctly drawn, each with a fleshed-out backstory that explains why their fears make them so vulnerable to Pennywise’s attacks.

Unlike King’s novel and the 1990 original “It,” the screenplay from Chase Palmer , Cary Fukunaga (the acclaimed writer-director of “ Sin Nombre ” and “ Beasts of No Nation ”) and Gary Dauberman doesn’t jump back and forth in time. It moves the time frame to 1988-89 and sticks with our core group of seven kids while they’re still adolescent misfits, which grounds their story and makes it more immersive. (It also surely will draw comparisons to the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” another supernatural mystery set in small-town America in the 1980s. The nostalgia factor is strong for those of us who grew up then, too.)

Muschietti’s version begins as the book does, though, with innocent, six-year-old Georgie Denbrough ( Jackson Robert Scott ) chasing his toy boat as it sails down a gutter and into a storm drain on a rainy afternoon in fictional Derry, Maine. He’s especially fond of the boat because it was a gift from his beloved older brother, Lieberher’s Bill, a smart, skinny kid who struggles with a stutter. That’s why his choice to chat with Pennywise—who just happens to pop up in the sewer with the boat and a smile—leads to his tragic demise. (Muschietti’s cutaways to a cat who witnesses everything from a nearby porch are chilling; he showed that same delicate mastery of mood with his underappreciated 2013 horror film “ Mama ,” starring Jessica Chastain .)

But Bill insists Georgie has just gone missing, as such an unusually large number of Derry children have over the years. He enlists his posse of similarly bullied, outcast pals to help him get to the bottom of this lingering mystery: wisecracking trash-talker Richie ( Finn Wolfhard , who also happens to be in “Stranger Things”); wimpy mama’s boy Eddie ( Jack Dylan Grazer ); nervous rabbi’s son Stanley ( Wyatt Oleff ); heavyset new kid Ben ( Jeremy Ray Taylor ); and the tough-but-kind Beverly (Lillis). Eventually, the home-schooled farmhand Mike ( Chosen Jacobs ), who’s suffered racial attacks as the only black kid in town, makes them a team of seven.

Despite the many terrifying moments they endure in their quest—scenes that will leave you trembling and giggling at once—“It” is even more powerful in the warm, easy camaraderie between its young stars. Certainly you could view it as a straight-up horror flick, but the underlying allegory of these characters facing their deepest fears as they enter adulthood gives the movie more emotional heft—a bit of bittersweet within the suffering.

These kids have all languished on the fringes—hence the “Losers Club” tag they wear as a badge of honor—whether it’s because of an overbearing mother, an abusive father or a devastating family loss. But they’re also all on the cusp of something. Pennywise knows what frightens them in this precarious state of flux and tries to use that devious, supernatural ability to lead kids to their doom. Confronting those fears rather than running away is what just might save them.

Tonally, “It” feels like a throwback to great King adaptations of yore—particularly “Stand By Me,” with its ragtag band of kids on a morbid adventure, affecting bravado and affectionately hassling each other to mask their true jitters. Wolfhard in particular has great comic timing as the profane Richie. Technically, Muschietti shows some glimmers of early Spielberg, too—the low camera angles, the images of kids on bikes pedaling furiously in a pack, the overall mix of wonder and danger.

“It” could have used a bit of tightening as it builds toward its climax, though. While the imagery is undeniably harrowing and even poignant in the action-packed third act, some of it feels dragged out and redundant. And because the final confrontation takes place within a dark, underground lair, it’s sometimes difficult to tell exactly what’s going on, despite the impressive visual effects on display as Pennywise unleashes his full powers on his young attackers. (That’s one of many ways in which the new “It” is a vast improvement over its low-tech predecessor.)

Not to burst your balloon, though, but the closing credits suggest this may not be the last we’ve seen of Pennywise after all.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

Now playing

You'll Never Find Me

Sheila o'malley.

In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon

Clint worthington.

Kaiya Shunyata

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Matt zoller seitz.

A Bit of Light

Peyton robinson.

The Old Oak

Film credits.

Rated R for violence/horror, bloody images, and for language.

135 minutes

Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise

Jaeden Lieberher as Bill Denbrough

Jeremy Ray Taylor as Ben Hanscom

Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh

Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier

Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie Kaspbrak

Chosen Jacobs as Mike Hanlon

Wyatt Oleff as Stan Uris

Nicholas Hamilton as Henry Bowers

Owen Teague as Patrick Hockstetter

Logan Thompson as Victor Criss

Jake Sim as Belch Huggins

Jackson Robert Scott as Georgie

Steven Williams as Leroy Hanlon

Javier Botet as The Leper

• Andy Muschietti

Writer (based on the novel by)

• Stephen King
• Gary Dauberman
• Chase Palmer
• Cary Fukunaga

Cinematographer

• Chung-hoon Chung
• Jason Ballantine
• Benjamin Wallfisch

Latest blog posts

Sonic the Hedgehog Franchise Moves to Streaming with Entertaining Knuckles

San Francisco Silent Film Festival Highlights Unearthed Treasures of Film History

Ebertfest Film Festival Over the Years

The 2024 Chicago Palestine Film Festival Highlights

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

Explaining the News to Our Kids

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

Common sense media reviewers.

Terrifying evil clown movie based on Stephen King classic.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Teaming up with others can help you beat seemingly

The lead characters are troubled outcasts prone to

Most lead characters are White, except for Mike (p

Very scary stuff; children are in constant peril,

Young teens make sex-related jokes with terms like

Very strong language, much of it spoken by 13-year

Many empty beer bottles near an adult's chair in o

Parents need to know that It is a horror film based on Stephen King's 1986 novel, which was previously adapted into a 1990 TV miniseries. It's very scary, and things get pretty gory: characters are stabbed, impaled, and beaten with rocks and blunt objects. A boy's arm is bitten off, teens shoot guns (once at…

Positive Messages

Teaming up with others can help you beat seemingly impossible odds and achieve a common goal. But bullying is shown in different forms, from emotionally abusive parents to physically abusive teens -- and the ways it's dealt with sometimes involve violence.

Positive Role Models

The lead characters are troubled outcasts prone to iffy behavior or lying -- but they step up and are at their best when working as a team.

Diverse Representations

Most lead characters are White, except for Mike (played by Chosen Jacobs, who's Black). Bill's actor, Jaeden Martell, has a Korean grandmother, but he passes for White in the film. Main lead Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) is larger than his peers and avoids weight-based stereotypes, characterized as being smart. (Everyone else in the cast is thin.) Though Beverly (Sophia Lillis) is the only girl among the group, she's resilient, courageous, and unafraid to face the clown. Bullying language includes "f--got" and, given the film's setting in 1989, there's mention of the AIDS epidemic (plus misinformation about how it's transmitted -- a character says someone got it by "touching a dirty pole on the subway").

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Very scary stuff; children are in constant peril, with a flat-out terrifying clown who threatens the main characters. Lots of bullying, including a scene in which a teenager carves a child's stomach with a knife, and another stabs a man in a very bloody scene. Teens bully a classmate by spreading rumors about how she's slept around. A bathroom is covered in blood, and characters spend a scene cleaning it up. A sheep is killed with a bolt gun. Rock throwing, with injuries. Broken arm. Clown stabbed through the face. Characters shoot guns, taking aim at a cat. Kicking, smashing in head with toilet tank lid. Kids beat the clown with many kinds of blunt objects. A father psychologically abuses his teen daughter -- rape is implied. The evil clown has supernatural powers, including shape-shifting and removing his own jaw.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Young teens make sex-related jokes with terms like "tickling your pickle," "period," "vagina," "birth control pills," "crabs," etc. Teens go swimming in their underwear. A kid tells another kid to "blow his dad." Two kids share a consensual kiss. Nonconsensual sex is also implied -- see Violence & Scariness for details.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Very strong language, much of it spoken by 13-year-olds, including "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "bulls--t," "t-ts," "ass," "damn," "d--k," "f--got," "piss," "you suck," "my wang," "bitch," "retarded," plus "Jesus" (as an exclamation).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Many empty beer bottles near an adult's chair in one scene. A girl steals cigarettes and later smokes a cigarette in a bathroom.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that It is a horror film based on Stephen King 's 1986 novel, which was previously adapted into a 1990 TV miniseries . It's very scary, and things get pretty gory: characters are stabbed, impaled, and beaten with rocks and blunt objects. A boy's arm is bitten off, teens shoot guns (once at a cat), and a sheep is killed with a bolt gun. There's lots of bullying, and it's implied that a father sexually abuses his teen daughter (who is also bullied by her classmates who spread rumors she's slept with many guys). Pennywise, the evil clown played by Bill Skarsgård , uses supernatural powers, including shape-shifting and removing his own jaw. Characters, including 13-year-olds, say "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," "f--got," and more. You can also expect a fair bit of sex-related talk among teens, though much of it is naïve and meant to be humorous. Two kids share a consensual kiss. Empty beer bottles are seen, and a girl steals a pack of cigarettes, later smoking one. Though the leads are mostly White boys, Mike (Chose Jacobs) is Black, Ben ( Jeremy Ray Taylor ) is larger than his thin peers and isn't defined by his weight, and Beverly ( Sophia Lillis ), the group's only female character, is resilient and courageous. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (289)
• Kids say (952)

Based on 289 parent reviews

Get Ready to Scream: Why 'This' is the Perfect First Horror Movie

A good start before going with overuse of jump scares and poor direction, what's the story.

IT begins in 1988 in the town of Derry, Maine, where little Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) goes outside in the rain to sail the toy boat that his older brother, Bill ( Jaeden Lieberher ), made for him. The boat goes down the drain. Looking into the sewer, Georgie encounters a scary clown called Pennywise ( Bill Skarsgård ) and disappears. The following summer, as school lets out, Bill and the other town outcasts -- including Beverly Marsh ( Sophia Lillis ) and loudmouth Richie Tozier ( Finn Wolfhard ) -- are beset by teenagers. They start to experience terrifying events of their own and notice that other kids in town are disappearing. Thanks to their new friend, Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), the teens discover that the waves of evil things seem to happen in cycles of 27 years and that all of it leads back to a well in the basement of a creepy old house. Bill vows to stop whatever it is that killed his brother.

Is It Any Good?

Based on Stephen King's 1986 novel, this terrifying clown movie builds its fright from fear itself. In that respect, It is more aligned with The Goonies , Stand by Me , and Stranger Things than it is with slasher movies or jump scares. Director Andy Muschietti , whose disappointing horror movie Mama never would have indicated anything as good as It , keeps things simple by focusing on the bond between the outcast kids -- there are plenty of scenes that could have been taken right out of any summertime coming-of-age movie -- and by using a slick combination of practical and digital effects.

The result feels like it could have come right out of the 1980s. Few of the familiar, overused clich és of more recent horror movies are here, and, with its effective use of music, editing, set design, choice of angles, and overall rhythms, It generates honest-to-goodness tingles, rather than quick shocks. And Pennywise (a chilling Skarsgård) is an iconic character, based not on a simple fear of death but on something more primal and unexplainable, the thing nightmares are made from.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about It's violence . What's the difference between the violence committed by abusive parents and classmates and the movie's supernatural forces? What's the impact of media violence on kids ?

Clowns are often seen at the circus or children's parties. Why is the clown here so scary?

How are the teens who bully their peers depicted in the movie? What are some ways to deal with harassment? How would you deal with them?

How does this movie compare to the book? To the miniseries ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 8, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : January 9, 2018
• Cast : Bill Skarsgård , Finn Wolfhard , Jaeden Martell
• Director : Andres Muschietti
• Inclusion Information : Asian actors
• Studio : New Line Cinema
• Genre : Horror
• Topics : Book Characters , Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Run time : 135 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : violence/horror, bloody images, and for language
• Last updated : April 21, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Stranger Things

The Shining

Stand by Me

The Goonies

Best Horror Movies

Scary movies for kids, related topics.

• Book Characters
• Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Advertisement

Supported by

Review: ‘It’ Brings Back Stephen King’s Killer Clown

• Share full article

By A.O. Scott

• Sept. 6, 2017

Late in the summer of 1989, the marquee of the downtown movie theater in Derry, Me., advertises “A Nightmare on Elm Street 5.” This is an accurate period detail, and also a declaration of kinship, if not outright homage. “It,” Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of the novel by Stephen King, belongs in the same tradition of small-town terror as Wes Craven’s “Nightmare” franchise, though the question of influence has a certain chicken-and-egg quality. Pennywise the clown, the designated predator in “It,” (played by Bill Skarsgard) is, like Freddy Krueger, an avatar of deep childhood fears. And like Freddy, he’s also the literal, lethal manifestation of the evil of the world. As such, he has the potential to spawn endless sequels. He’ll be back.

Or rather, he is back. Mr. Muschietti’s “It,” written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman, represents a second trip to this particular well. Mr. King’s novel, published in 1986, was adapted for network television in 1990. The new movie, a skillful blend of nostalgic sentiment and hair-raising effects, with the visual punch of big-screen digital hocus-pocus and the liberties of the R rating, still has the soothing charm of familiarity. The gang of misfit ’80s kids who face down the clown and the deeper horror he represents evoke both the middle school posse of the recent TV series “Stranger Things” (there’s some overlap in the cast), but also the intrepid brotherhood from “Stand by Me,” surely one of the all-time top five Stephen King movie adaptations.

We can argue about the others — I’m happy to make a case for John Carpenter’s underrated “Christine” — but this “It” doesn’t quite ascend to their level. Nonetheless, the filmmakers honor both the pastoral and the infernal dimensions of Mr. King’s distinctive literary vision. Derry, with its redbrick storefronts and its quirks and kinks, seems like a genuinely nice place to live in spite of the fact that its citizens, children in particular, turn up missing or maimed at an alarming rate.

The supernatural nastiness embodied by Pennywise is abetted and to some extent camouflaged by the ordinary human awfulness that also afflicts Derry. In addition to menacing clowns, phantasmatic lepers and spooky paintings come to life, the town is home to an ugly assortment of bullies (the worst one played by Nicholas Hamilton), gossips and abusive parents.

Against these forces — the banal and the diabolical alike — “It” assembles a squad of early and preadolescent ghostbusters as varied as an infantry platoon in a World War II combat picture. The leader is Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), a melancholy, thoughtful boy whose little brother, Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott), has been spirited down a storm sewer by Pennywise. Bill’s comrades — they call themselves the Losers’ Club — include a nerdy chatterbox (Finn Wolfhard) and a germ-phobic mama’s boy (Jack Dylan Grazer), plus a Jewish kid (Wyatt Oleff), a black kid (Chosen Jacobs) and a new kid (Jeremy Ray Taylor). Also a girl, Bev (Sophia Lillis), who becomes part of a sweet, alliterative romantic triangle involving Bill and the new kid, whose name is Ben.

Like many real kids — even in 1989, even in Maine — they have filthy mouths. They also experience the freedom and peril of growing up in the days before cellphones, bicycle helmets and helicopter parenting. What’s scary about “It,” for them and for the audience, is also fun. The group ranges freely through the forests and fields around Derry, playing detective until the forces of darkness stand revealed with slimy tentacles and multiple rows of sharp, ravenous teeth.

That isn’t a spoiler, but it’s a bit of paradox. The non-clown essence of It, an H.R. Gigeresque vagina dentata type of deal, is far less scary than Pennywise, with his fluting voice and red balloons, and the other specters that seem to spring from tender young psyches. As creature design has become easier and more elaborate, thanks to digital techniques, it has also become less imaginative. Movie monsters resemble one another more and more, and movies of distinct genres feel increasingly trapped within the expected. The climactic sequence of “It” sacrifices horror-movie creepiness for action-movie bombast, staging a big fight in a cavernous space. We might as well be looking at superheroes.

That we aren’t comes as a relief. The young cast is consistently good company, in particular the Ben-Bill-Bev trio. Ms. Lillis earns the Molly Ringwald reference that mischievously pops up in the script as a wink to those in the audience who still remember the ’80s. What a great time that was to be afraid.

It Rated R. What would you say to a clown like that? Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

As “Sex and the City” became more widely available on Netflix, younger viewers have watched it with a critical eye . But its longtime millennial and Gen X fans can’t quit.

Hoa Xuande had only one Hollywood credit when he was chosen to lead “The Sympathizer,” the starry HBO adaptation of a prize-winning novel. He needed all the encouragement he could get .

Even before his new film “Civil War” was released, the writer-director Alex Garland faced controversy over his vision of a divided America  with Texas and California as allies.

Theda Hammel’s directorial debut, “Stress Positions,” a comedy about millennials weathering the early days of the pandemic , will ask audiences to return to a time that many people would rather forget.

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• What Is Cinema?
• Newsletters

It Review: An Excellent Coming-of-Age Movie, Until That Clown Gets in the Way

By Hillary Busis

The most appealing parts of Andy Muschietti’s splashy It channel another classic Stephen King adaptation—but not the 1990 miniseries version of It , featuring an iconic Tim Curry performance that sent scores of terrified children straight to the therapist’s couch (according to schoolyard legend, anyway).

No, It is at its best when the titular shape-shifting demon—which, as if you weren’t aware, most often takes the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown—is nowhere to be found. The first It was anchored by Curry’s gleeful menace; the second focuses on the bond formed between a group of young misfits one crazy summer. There’s more than a whiff of Stand by Me about the newer movie, not only because of thematic similarities between that film’s source material and It, but also thanks to Muschietti’s killer cast—a deft collection of teenaged talents that seem destined to break big à la Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell.

When It ’s seven-core performers— Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, and Jack Dylan Grazer —are arguing about the merits of loogie mass vs. distance or bashfully exploring their first flashes of puppy love, It is a delight. Every member of the gang that comes to call themselves the Losers’ Club is natural and charismatic, especially the luminous Lillis as Beverly, the only girl in the group, and Wolfhard, whose wisecracking Richie easily walks away with the movie. Their ensemble scenes display the same sort of easy camaraderie that made Stranger Things (which also stars Wolfhard, and was heavily influenced by the original It ) such a hit for Netflix last summer. Sure, the movie’s R rating allows Muschietti to get gorier than the 1990 It —but more importantly, it gives the kids the freedom to say “fuck,” not gratuitously but with a studied nonchalance familiar to anyone who’s ever been 13.

Alas, It isn’t just a coming-of-age story; it’s also a movie about a killer clown. And while its revamped Pennywise, played here by Bill Skarsgård (brother-of- Alexander, son-of- Stellan ), has his moments, his scenes often feel more distracting than essential.

#cneembed: script/video/5981d176be10344717000000.js?muted=1 ||||||

Though King’s novel crosscuts between its characters as children in 1958 and as adults in 1985, the new movie takes advantage of current nostalgia trends by transporting the kids to 1989 and nixing material about the grown-up Losers entirely. (That’s all coming in the sequel .) The shifting timeline doesn’t affect the Losers’ dynamic, but it does force It, which can take the form of the thing that scares each child most, to reach into a new bag of tricks.

When he’s not japing as Pennywise, King’s It loves to impersonate old Universal creatures like Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, and the Wolfman. Because those beasts don’t hit the same beats for modern audiences, Muschietti’s It opts instead to transform into a series of grotesque computer-generated spectacles, which are usually punctuated by a wordless appearance from Pennywise himself. While the film sometimes uses suspense as a tool, it more often dives head-first into dramatizing King’s grislier flights of fancy, from a child’s arm being ripped off to a fountain of blood that puts the bucket in Carrie to shame.

Though the filmmakers claim to have relied on practical effects whenever possible, there’s still a C.G.I. slickness here that robs It itself of its urgency. Tim Curry’s version of the clown was all chalky greasepaint and bloodshot eyes and horrific yellow teeth—a creature of fantasy, sure, but a tangible one. By contrast, Skarsgård’s preternaturally baby-smooth face and generic horror-movie growl fail to make much of a lasting impression, especially because he has fewer lines than Curry did. And though some of the film’s bigger set pieces show the same irreverent wit as the Losers’ ensemble scenes—at one point, two of the kids are faced with a set of doors reading “SCARY,” “VERY SCARY,” and “NOT SCARY AT ALL”—those overlong sequences are often dragged down by clichés, all swelling music cues and jump scares and shots of a child walking slowly toward something he should logically be running away from.

By Julie Miller

By Richard Lawson

By Chris Murphy

It’s the human monsters in It that end up leaving a more permanent mark, from the adults who consciously ignore the strange and violent happenings in their sleepy Maine town to the father who sexually assaults his child—though the movie decides to soften the mortal bullies who also torment the Losers. (There are a lot of people tormenting the Losers!) In the book and miniseries, those cartoonish thugs are virulently racist and anti-Semitic; in the movie, they’re just sadistic jerks. While the impulse to avoid using racially charged language is understandable, doing so also gives Jacobs’s Mike, the only Loser of color, even less of an arc than the he has in the flashback half of the book—especially since his role as the gang’s chief expositor has also been handed off to another character. Together, these decisions have the unfortunate effect of making Mike the least well-defined member of the group; perhaps the sequel will flesh him out a bit more.

If It were just a flashy horror spectacle, issues like that—and the film’s treatment of Beverly, whose main personality trait is the desire she sparks in others—wouldn’t stick out quite as much. But like King’s best work, the movie wants to be greater than the sum of some cheap scares. Often, thanks to its strong cast and quieter moments, It succeeds in this goal—but there’d be a lot more time for character development if the film didn’t feature quite so many long, frenetic scenes of animated mayhem. As a seminal entry in the analog “kids on bikes” genre , King’s It successfully married real terror (and a magic turtle!) with a lovely meditation on innocence lost. The new It almost makes you wish for a story that ditched the clown for a less literal metaphor.

When Stephen King Reviews Stephen King Movies

Hillary Busis

Senior hollywood editor.

By Dana Schwartz

By Laura Bradley

Screen Rant

As a coming of age parable, it succeeds at being both horrifying and emotionally-resonant, even while adapting only half of king's original story..

Adapted from the best-selling Stephen King novel of the same name (first published in 1986), the movie version of  IT spent a number of years in development under the watchful eye of filmmaker Cary Fukunaga ( Beasts of No Nation ) before ultimately making it to the big screen with Andy Muschietti (the director of  Mama ) at the helm. The change in directors was no doubt of concern to fans of both King's source material and the horror/thriller author's body of work in general, given that movie/TV adaptations of King's literature have (to put it simply) a spotty record, at best. Despite its drawn out pre-production process and change in creative personnel, IT  is one of the better cinematic interpretations of King's writing and certainly the best produced in modern times. As a coming of age parable, IT succeeds at being both horrifying and emotionally-resonant, even while adapting only half of King's original story.

On a rainy September day in the city of Derry, Maine, circa 1988, young Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) mysteriously goes missing after he sets off playing with a paper boat that his older brother, Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), made for him. Several months later, at the start of the summer of 1989 (and the end of the school year), Bill sets out with his friends - who together form a group known as The Losers' Club - to try and find his younger sibling at long last, despite his parents having already decided that Georgie is dead and gone.

However, in the process of searching for Georgie, The Losers' Club - along with new recruits in the forms of the socially-stigmatized Beverly (Sophia Lillis), home-schooled Mike (Chosen Jacob) and new kid Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) - discover the terrifying truth about Derry: that it is the home of a seemingly immortal creature that can shape-shift and feeds on children by taking on the form of one Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård). When the Losers come to realize that Pennywise gains strength by feeding on their own fears, it falls to the young outsiders to band together and battle their demons from both within and from the outside world, if they are to stay alive.

In terms of narrative, IT  is more of a troubling and creepy fantasy allegory along the lines of Muschietti's directorial debut Mama than a "scary" piece of filmmaking. In that respect, though, the movie is faithful in spirit to King's source material, despite making some significant changes to the text - in particular, updating the time period in which the members of the Losers' Club are preteens from the 1950s to the 1980s. Muschietti isn't operating on quite the same level yet as the best modern mainstream horror directors (see James Wan, David F. Sandberg) when it comes to delivering scares through tension-fueled sequencing and/or building up to the spooky moments (e.g. jump scares). However, because it offers both more overtly disturbing imagery and narrative substance than many other studio horror films nowadays (even the R-Rated ones), IT  manages to be more "horrifying" than its peers, despite being less "scary."

The IT script, which is credited to Fukunaga and his writing partner Chase Palmer, as well as Gary Dauberman ( Annabelle: Creation ), explores the same themes of childhood grief and trauma as King's original novel does, as well as the timely-as-ever idea that evil must be actively confronted through mutual cooperation and trust, lest it be allowed to flourish. Muschietti's film adaptation does justice by these elements from King's novel, thanks in no small part to the charismatic and compelling young actors who bring The Losers' Club's various personalities to life. Between determined Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), kindly Beverly (Sophia Lillis), wise-guy Ritchie ( Stranger Things ' Finn Wolfhard), intellectual Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), courageous Mike (Chosen Jacobs), practical Stanley (Wyatt Oleff) and hypochondriac Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), the Losers bring both heart and humor to the proceedings here, making it easy to cheer for them as they battle terrors of both the fantastical and everyday variety during their adventure.

While IT  explores the pain and suffering of The Losers' Club with enough depth (some, like Bill and Beverly, more than others) to make their experiences and the characters feel grounded, it has less success at making both the adults that populate Derry and borderline-psychotic local bully Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) feel equally three-dimensional. Because  IT  only hints at the effect that its namesake has had on the town of Derry and the people who have long resided there (including, Beverly's own abusive father), the human villains in the film come off as being kitschy - as though they've been lifted straight from an actual 1980s coming of age movie, themselves. Pennywise's backstory and the mythology behind the creature isn't revealed in full here either (more on that later), but Bill Skarsgård nevertheless succeeds in leaving his mark on the role by putting a radically different (read: more chilling and inhuman) spin on the monster than Tim Curry did with his memorable performance as "The Dancing Clown" in the 1990s IT TV miniseries. However, whereas Curry succeeded in being a scene-stealer in the '90s small screen version of IT , the opposite is true for the movie, e.g. Skarsgård's Pennywise is overshadowed by the Losers' Club and their personal struggles.

Both Skarsgård's Pennywise and the setting of IT (2017) are, naturally, more polished in their presentation and design compared to their counterparts in the '90s TV adaptation. Thanks to costume designer Janie Bryant ( Mad Men ) and production designer Claude Paré ( The Age of Adaline ), the 1980s backdrop of IT is convincing and manages to include nods to the pop culture of the time in a more organic fashion that, arguably, something such as  Stranger Things does. Cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung ( Stoker ) likewise uses strikingly dark colors and shadows to create slick horror movie scenery (including, the sewers beneath Derry and the infamous Neibolt Street house) that looks far better and bigger than the film's modest budget might suggest. That being said, the movie admittedly has mixed success when it comes to using CGI to realize Pennywise's fantastical characteristics and the creations that he conjures from the Losers' imagination. Like Mama , IT is most effective when it applies its digital effects with a more subtle touch.

It's no secret that IT only adapts half of King's original novel for the big screen (as was mentioned earlier) - and though the film by and large works as a standalone narrative, it noticeably leaves a few smaller story threads dangling and questions unanswered, for IT: Chapter Two (as the sequel presumably will be titled) to pick up. The decision to split up King's massive source material into two separate parts was a smart call, since it allows Muschietti to deliver a solid horror filmgoing experience here - without having to sacrifice much of the substance of King's book in the process - along with the promise of a second installment in the IT  film saga that should only enrich its predecessor (and vice versa). Sine the film mostly lives up to the current expectations that are surrounding it, there's fair reason to think that IT: Chapter Two , with Muschietti back at the helm, will float equally well.

IT  is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It is 135 minutes long and is Rated R for violence/horror, bloody images, and for language.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

Key Release Dates

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids band together to destroy a shape-shifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, their small Maine town... Read all In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids band together to destroy a shape-shifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, their small Maine town. In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids band together to destroy a shape-shifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, their small Maine town.

• Andy Muschietti
• Chase Palmer
• Cary Joji Fukunaga
• Gary Dauberman
• Bill Skarsgård
• Jaeden Martell
• Finn Wolfhard
• 2.1K User reviews
• 618 Critic reviews
• 69 Metascore
• 10 wins & 49 nominations

• Bill Denbrough
• (as Jaeden Lieberher)

• Richie Tozier

• Beverly Marsh

• Ben Hanscom

• Mike Hanlon

• Eddie Kaspbrak

• Stanley Uris

• Henry Bowers

• Belch Huggins

• Victor Criss

• Patrick Hockstetter

• Georgie Denbrough

• Officer Bowers

• Zach Denbrough

• Sharon Denbrough

• Sonia Kaspbrak
• (as Molly Jane Atkinson)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Jack Dylan Grazer (Eddie) was the first one out of all the kids to work with Bill Skarsgård (Pennywise). During their scene, Grazer would cry and gag while Skarsgård was right in his face yelling and drooling. Skarsgård was genuinely concerned for Grazer and after the scene ended, asked him if he was okay. Grazer looked right at him and said, "Love what you're doing with the character!" Skarsgård was left confused and impressed at Grazer's attitude, calling the child actors "little professionals."
• Goofs (at around 28 mins) Derry, Maine is in the USA, however a war memorial contains the line "for king and country", revealing the filming location in Canada.

Richie Tozier : I hear the list is longer than my wang.

Stanley Uris : That's not saying much.

• Crazy credits The film title "It" appears at the start as the camera zooms out of a Derry sewer tunnel. The title appears again in the closing credits with "Chapter One" added to it.
• Connections Featured in Blackcatloner: The Last Week of Work Workout (2017)
• Soundtracks Love Removal Machine Written by Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy (as William Duffy) Performed by The Cult Courtesy of Beggars Banquet Records Ltd.

User reviews 2.1K

• Sep 7, 2017

Reboots & Remakes

• How long is It? Powered by Alexa
• Was It an extraterrestrial?
• Is this a re-imagining of the TV miniseries?
• Who wrote the script?
• September 8, 2017 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official Instagram
• It: Chapter One
• Bangor, Maine, USA (on location)
• New Line Cinema
• RatPac-Dune Entertainment
• Vertigo Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $35,000,000 (estimated)
• $328,874,981
• $123,403,419
• Sep 10, 2017
• $704,242,888

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 15 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Surround 7.1

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• IMDb Answers: Help fill gaps in our data
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed

• Become a Critical Movie Critic
• Movie Review Archives

Movie Review: IT (2017)

• Movie Reviews
• 8 responses
• --> September 8, 2017

It can be a tricky thing to review horror films. The red-headed stepchild of the movie business, horror is an incredibly subjective genre for fans. Despite repeatedly being let down by film after film, we return to the theater with each new offering, hoping for a gem — a new classic. Remakes are especially daunting undertakings, as the new version is up against fiercely loyal fans who judge a new film by its poster, well before the first images even grace the screen. Add to these challenges book adaptations with already established film versions and you’re faced with an unscalable feat.

In the case of IT , there are some seriously huge clown shoes to fill — how do you successfully adapt a revered classic of horror literature written by the king himself (Stephen King, that is)? How do you remake an existing adaptation, featuring one of the most iconic horror characters with an unmatchable performance by the legendary Tim Curry?

Ask director Andy Muschietti. Ask screenwriters Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman. Ask Bill Skarsgård. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it admirably.

In October of 1988, young Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher, “ Midnight Special ”), sick in bed, builds a paper boat for his little brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) to sail on the rainy streets of Derry, Maine. The love the two brothers share is immediately apparent; Georgie looks up to Bill, and Bill is clearly his hero. When Bill warns Georgie to be careful outside, you know that Georgie would never think of doing otherwise; however, in the subsequent well-known (and well-publicized) scene, Georgie’s boat gets away from him and slips down into the sewer where it’s retrieved by Pennywise the Clown. After a tense and terrifying encounter, Georgie disappears, adding to the growing list of missing children in their small town.

The following June, Bill and his friends escape the doldrums of school into the freedom of summer. While his friends are excited about dumping their leftover folders and notebooks into the trash, Bill remains preoccupied with finding his little brother, studying sewer blueprints and maps in his garage. Meanwhile, his friends are haunted by different fears: Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer, “Scales: Mermaids Are Real”) is tormented by a skeletal leper that chases him from a dilapidated neighborhood house; a twisted ghostly woman leers at Stanley Uris (Wyatt Oleff, “ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ”) from a painting in his father’s office; Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis, “37”) hears whispering children calling her for help from the drain in her bathroom sink; Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs, “Cops and Robbers”) barely escapes the reaching ghostly hands from the site of a historical fire; and Ben Hanscom’s (Jeremy Ray Taylor, “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip”) studies are interrupted by something treacherous in the storage room of the local library . . . not to mention the very real-life threats they all face from bullies Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton, “ Captain Fantastic ”), Belch Huggins (Jake Sim, “Raising Expectations” TV series), Victor Criss (Logan Thompson), and Patrick Hockstetter (Owen Teague, “Echoes of War ”). The Derry kids — dubbed the Losers’ Club by Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard, “Stranger Things” TV series) — realize that there is a malicious evil in their small town, and that the adults will be of no help to them (in fact, they often just don’t see things happen . . . literally and figuratively). United in their fear of the terrifying clown they see around every corner, they decide their only defense is to venture after Pennywise together, hoping they can prevent any more children from going missing.

Stephen King’s classic New York Times bestseller IT is a doorstop of a book that stretches past 1000 pages, delving into brilliant characterizations, dreadful town histories, and bone-chilling encounters with an ancient evil that returns every 27 years. In 1990, Tommy Lee Wallace brought his version to the small screen in a four-hour miniseries that became the source point for many people with coulrophobia (fear of clowns). Andy Muschietti’s version of IT (this film being Chapter One) keeps the focus to the children of Derry, and the cast is pitch-perfect in their believability. One will be immediately charmed by each of the Losers’ Club members, and will feel strong nostalgic pangs for a simpler time of bike-riding and summer swimming trips. Their loyalty and love for each other is palpable, and the audience shares their faith in each other in their fight against the clown, masterfully recreated by Bill Skarsgård (“ Anna Karenina ”).

As incredible as Tim Curry was in 1990, Skarsgård embodies pure malevolence as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and his antics are guaranteed to create a new generation of clown phobics. While the CGI is a tad heavy-handed here and there, the overall effect of this new Pennywise is extremely unsettling and viewers will be just as entranced by his eyes as any of the characters in the film. Pennywise is truly fascinating to watch, and astonishingly, you’ll find yourself hoping for more terrifying doses of Skarsgård’s performance.

As a huge Stephen King fan myself, I’ve been anxiously anticipating the release of this film, as I’m frequently disappointed by lackluster and rushed adaptations of his work (case in point, this summer’s “ The Dark Tower ”); however, I was marvelously satisfied with Muschietti’s version of one of my favorite novels. While there are definitely small changes made that I’m not crazy about (far too little of Mike Hanlon, guys . . .) and one major change in particular near the end that I’m rather intrigued by (if you already know the novel, you’ll know what I mean when you [don’t] see it), IT has delivered an outstandingly well-written nostalgia trip into our past summers and past nightmares.

The voices of the children whisper that they “. . . all float down here” and warn that “You’ll float, too.” They’re not wrong. You’ll float, all right; you’ll float out of the theater with grim satisfaction, anxious for Chapter Two.

Tagged: children , clown , evil , murder , novel adaptation , remake

School teacher by day. Horror aficionado by night.

Movie Review: Little Fish (2020) Movie Review: The Unholy (2021) Movie Review: The Mark of the Bell Witch (2020) Movie Review: Chop Chop (2020) Movie Review: Coven of Evil (2020) Movie Review: Mara (2018) Movie Review: The First Purge (2018)

'Movie Review: IT (2017)' have 8 comments

September 8, 2017 @ 9:10 pm DevlonOchre

Totally psyched to see my favorite King story get a proper treatment for screen!

Log in to Reply

September 8, 2017 @ 9:56 pm wassupial

I definitely enjoyed it but it is not as dark and scary as I was hoping it’d be. Only the library scene got me to jump.

September 8, 2017 @ 11:21 pm GoodSamaritan

Never read the book nor have I seen the mini-series so I went in knowing nothing other than a evil clown was responsible for killing some kids. I guess because of this I was a bit letdown because I was expecting Pennywise to be more like Freddy Krueger and the movie more like A Nightmare on Elm Street. Still it’s not a bad movie just not what I was prepared for.

September 9, 2017 @ 12:17 am Pete

IT didn’t do anything for me.

September 9, 2017 @ 10:30 am cheeryhead

“one major change in particular near the end that I’m rather intrigued by (if you already know the novel, you’ll know what I mean when you [don’t] see it)”

So the sex scene is omitted? I don’t think it ever belonged in the book anyway and I think King regretted writing it in.

September 9, 2017 @ 12:02 pm Jackson War

I hear it described as The Goonies on horror steroids and uppers!

September 9, 2017 @ 3:38 pm Madelyn

I loved it. It didn’t scare me to where I wanted to hide my eyes but it scared me that I had a constant pit in my stomach. Great job by all the kid actors and Bill Skarsgard, they were very convincing. I can only hope Chapter 2 is done as good.

September 10, 2017 @ 6:01 am DanMaz

First chance I got I’d nope the hell outta that town!

Privacy Policy | About Us

 |  Log in

'It' is dominating the box office with a unique blend of horror and laughs

Following a summer movie season that Hollywood wants to quickly forget , it has a hit to kick off the fall.

"It," the latest adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel, is an extremely entertaining studio horror movie that will make you laugh as much as jump in fear.

That's the big takeaway from a movie that had some big shoes to fill, as it goes up against a previous adaptation, the 1990 two-night ABC made-for-TV movie that haunted anyone who grew up during that time. Tim Curry's portrayal of the alien who often takes the form of a clown named Pennywise and for centuries had been murdering kids from the quiet town of Derry, Maine, was masterfully done.

So not looking to top something that was already great, director Andy Muschietti gave the new movie a new feel. (Muschietti came on the project after Cary Fukunaga left over creative differences , though Fukunaga still has a screenwriting credit.) This new version is set in the late 1980s (it's the 1960s in the book), and it makes the group of high-school losers who band together to take on Pennywise more edgy and foul-mouthed than the kids of the 1990 version.

That leads to a lot of F-bombs and funny one-liners, both done perfectly by child actor Finn Wolfhard (whom you know best as Mike Wheeler on the Netflix show "Stranger Things"). In fact, the entire kid cast does well. And though it's hard to top Curry's Pennywise, Bill Skarsgård gives a solid performance, helped out greatly by CGI to pull off the scares.

There's no question this "It" will bring nightmares to a new generation, and realizing it has a good thing, Warner Bros. is far from ending things. Unlike the 1990 version, this movie does not delve into the characters when they grow up and have to battle Pennywise again. That means a sequel is certainly on the way and will feature the characters all grown up.

So get ready for another round of scares, and in the immediate future, prepare for constant speculation on which adult actors will take on the roles.

Watch: How sound effects for horror movies are made

• Main content

• Newsletters

Site search

• Israel-Hamas war
• Home Planet
• 2024 election
• Supreme Court
• Relationships
• Homelessness
• All explainers
• Future Perfect

Filed under:

It: a superb Stephen King adaptation fueled less by scary clowns than by real-life evil

The new film adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic exposes the dark rotting heart of 2017.

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Twitter
• Share this on Reddit
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: It: a superb Stephen King adaptation fueled less by scary clowns than by real-life evil

In August 2014, during the nationwide protests following the death of Mike Brown, a photo went viral. In it, a woman named France Francois held aloft a protest sign reading, “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit.” Francois told press she’d been galvanized by memories of protesting the death of a 14-year-old who died while in detention. While she was at the march, one woman told her she’d been protesting this shit for the last seven decades.

The same profound world-weariness looms over the perpetually overcast town of Derry, Maine, in Andy Muschietti’s new film adaptation of Stephen King’s It.

There’s a common mantra that circulates within social movements that we just have to wait for evil to “die out,” a pervasive belief that every generation inevitably advances society forward over the dead bodies of those who were holding it back. But if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that time is a flat circle and that evil continually resurfaces, armed with ever more powerful weapons. As the keeper of our horror-stricken national conscience, Stephen King knows better than anyone that evil is generational, that it must be routed again and again. King knows, too, that “evil” isn’t about larger-than-life acts, but about the everyday callousness, abuse of power, and indifference to abuse of power that humans practice as they go about their lives.

This truth is what makes Derry arguably the most quintessential fictional town in America. And It pulls off the feat of making Derry’s symbolic decay and encroaching evil a metaphor for the times in which we live, while still delivering the classic coming-of-age fable King fans know and love.

It is as much about the specter of real-life terror as it is the supernatural

In It , the titular evil entity returns every 27 years, and the group who must face it (this time around) is a band of children on the brink of adolescence. They include Jaeden Lieberher as Bill, the de facto leader who grieves his little brother’s mysterious abduction; Sophia Lillis as Beverly, the group’s only girl; and shy Ben ( Jeremy Ray Taylor ). Rounding out the group are smart-mouthed Ritchie ( Stranger Things ’ Finn Wolfhard ), incessant talker Eddie ( Jack Dylan Grazer ), the reluctant Stan ( Wyatt Oleff ), and Mike ( Chosen Jacobs ), who as a homeschooled black kid is the biggest outsider of them all.

Together, they form a charming, funny, and pure-hearted misfit ensemble: the Losers Club. This is a moniker taken from King’s book that’s not so much announced onscreen as it is implied with every awkward social exchange, every insult, every punch thrown by an oversized bully — and Derry abounds with bullies.

Stephen King is known for filling his books with bullied outcasts , from Carrie to Stand By Me — and like each of those stories, the kids in It inhabit an R-rated space that’s typically reserved for adults in the movies, a space full of F-words and violence. But while the bullies are terrifying, in King’s worlds, adults are always worse, exercising terrifying strangleholds over the lives of children. It’s this sinister reality that’s lurking in It ’s corners; come for the fathomless cosmic evil, stay for the reminder that in real life, evil is nearly always mundane.

The events of It kick off when Bill’s little brother Georgie has a shudder-inducing run-in with Pennywise the Clown ( Bill Skarsgård ), the shapeshifting form of fear itself that terrorizes and ultimately devours Derry’s children. The Losers Club are the only people in Derry who seem to be awake and attuned to the sheer horror of the town’s rising number of missing children and a death rate that’s six times higher than the national average. Driven by Bill’s quest to know Georgie’s fate, the Losers, drawn together partly out of friendship and partly out of desperation, begin a heroes’ journey to vanquish It once and for all — a journey that ultimately spans nearly three decades in King’s novel.

Pennywise is the most famous part of It. And he’s suitably creepy in Muschietti’s film, menacing and enigmatic enough to satisfy even the most die-hard It fans and Tim Curry loyalists . But while Curry’s iconic performance overshadowed everything that was mediocre about the 1990 miniseries, Skarsgård’s Pennywise and the many traditional horror scares he engenders aren’t remotely the most interesting parts of this layered, knowing film. That’s because Muschietti understands that Pennywise, in all his Lovecraftian incomprehensibility, is only a symptom of the larger evil in King’s mythos — the darkness that lurks in the hearts of power-hungry men and causes society’s foundations to rot.

It markets itself as nostalgia, but it’s an allegory for 2017

Judging by its record-breaking trailer, It is the most highly anticipated film of the fall of 2017. It could be easy to chalk up this clamor to nostalgia: Muschietti’s choice to relocate the sprawling book’s first timeline from the late 1950s to 1989 caters to that impulse (the second timeline will constitute an entirely separate film “chapter” to come), and the timing of It ’s arrival, between seasons of its spiritual successor Stranger Things , doesn’t hurt any. It is also rife with nostalgic cultural signifiers, from arcade games and era-specific movie posters to a shiny Trans Am and a running joke about New Kids on the Block that encapsulates the film’s loving teasing of its socially awkward protagonists.

But Muschietti’s largely faithful adaptation of King’s story relies not on nostalgia for its emotional underpinnings, but rather a keen sense of the present moment in all its deep tensions and ugliness. Alongside It ’s most famous storyline — Pennywise abducting a string of children from an indifferent population — Muschietti steadily builds out the real-life terrors happening in Derry and the lengths our protagonists must go to in order to effectively combat them.

The main teen bully, Henry Bowers ( Nicholas Hamilton ), is a violent racist who means to do harm and continually levels up in weaponry. Beverly’s father molests her. Eddie’s mother exhibits signs of Munchausen’s by proxy . Mike, in a possible homage to black filmmaker Charles Burnett’s brilliant film Killer of Sheep , is forced to stun sheep using a bolt gun while his uncle informs him that he has to learn to wield the weapon or else it will be wielded against him. Later, a wordless, lingering shot of Mike carrying the bolt gun to fight It reveals how fully he’s absorbed the lesson.

There’s an acute release in watching the Losers face down the onscreen terrors of It in ways we can’t face down real-life terrors. When the Losers finally get fed up and fight back against Bowers and his minions, it’s almost more satisfying than the fight they ultimately wage against Pennywise. Muschietti’s film might seem over-the-top in any other year, with its unsubtle depictions of hate, racism, and othering; instead, in a year that’s seen the dramatic surfacing of those elements , it serves as a grim, temporary catharsis — temporary, because the fight to defeat these social evils is never over.

It understands King’s idea of horror — and his optimism — in a way few King adaptations do

For every strange supernatural development in It , a real-life counterpart looms with equal menace. When not in his resting state as Pennywise, It constantly shape-shifts between horrifying phantasms and images of real people from the lives of our heroes. When Bowers finally seems to go Super-Saiyan in his capacity for evil, It presides over a creepy Candle Cove -like children’s TV show ordering him to “kill them all.” This type of juxtaposition creates a tapestry of magical realism woven out of dread, an atmosphere of omniscient terror that’s far more chilling than the threat of a jump scare around the corner (of which It also indulges in its fair share).

The supernatural elements are creepy, yes: Horror-movie staples like scary dolls, creepy old houses, coffins, geysers of blood, and gruesome visions of dead people are all here in droves. But most of these elements feel like dutiful afterthoughts — or superimposed homages to other King stories like Carrie and Salem’s Lot — rather than the main event. Instead, It is fueled by the ever-present sense of a spiraling loss of control.

In this regard, It joins The Shining and Carrie as the best of the Stephen King horror adaptations — films that understand that King’s novels are never about surface-level scares, but about the countless ways in which individual small-time acts of evil coalesce into terrifying systems of violence, often aided by an increasingly indifferent society.

In 2017, this is the most troubling message It could possibly send. Yet for all its dark social relevance, It is also moving, emotional, and even optimistic. The Losers’ love and loyalty for each other keep the film compelling in moments when the jump scares wane, and it’s this steady warmheartedness that makes It feel like the dream Spielberg adaptation of King that we never actually got in the ’80s.

All of this makes It the perfect end-of-summer movie: a film saturated in waning sunlight, with the innocence of childhood giving way to adolescence while childhood terrors give way to much scarier real threats. For King’s Losers, summer is officially over forever — but they’ll face the grim days ahead together, and for now, that’s enough.

Will you support Vox today?

We believe that everyone deserves to understand the world that they live in. That kind of knowledge helps create better citizens, neighbors, friends, parents, and stewards of this planet. Producing deeply researched, explanatory journalism takes resources. You can support this mission by making a financial gift to Vox today. Will you join us?

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via

Next Up In Culture

Sign up for the newsletter today, explained.

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

Thanks for signing up!

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

Summer Lee’s primary puts Democrats’ divides on Israel on display

Can Canada stave off populism?

Compassion is making a comeback in America

Ukraine aid and a potential TikTok ban: What’s in the House’s new $95 billion bill

The Supreme Court doesn’t seem eager to get involved with homelessness policy

Drake vs. everyone, explained

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

• DVD & Streaming
• Horror , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• September 8, 2017
• Jaeden Lieberher as Bill Denbrough; Jeremy Ray Taylor as Ben Hanscom; Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh; Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier; Chosen Jacobs as Mike Hanlon; Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie Kaspbrak; Wyatt Oleff as Stanley Uris; Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise; Nicholas Hamilton as Henry Bowers

Home Release Date

• January 9, 2018
• Andy Muschietti

Distributor

• Warner Bros.

Movie Review

When I was a kid, I often listened to the Mister Rogers song, “You Can Never Go Down the Drain.” The rain may go down , he assured me, But you can’t go down. You’re bigger than any bathroom drain.

Pennywise begs to differ.

The Dancing Clown lives in the dank, dark underworld where the drains of Derry, Maine, lead. He’s led many a child down drain and tunnel. It’s just a matter of asking nicely enough. Pulling hard enough. Cutting deeply enough.

Going down into Pennywise’s world is easy. It’s the leaving that’s hard.

Georgie Denbrough finds that world during a rainstorm, following his paper boat down the gutters until it vanishes into a storm drain. Georgie peers into the darkness … and he vanishes, too.

People plaster posters across town, begging for information on Georgie’s disappearance. But soon they’re papered over by those of another missing child. And another. And another.

Even children who don’t disappear begin seeing … things. A picture of a twisted woman comes to life. Burning hands claw through cracks in a door. A headless child haunts the library.

And then there’s the clown, of course. Always the clown, with his bright red hair and rat-like teeth. He stares from shadows, hides in boxes, lurks in the drains.

The adults seem oblivious. Clueless. But the children … they see. They hear. They know.

You can go down the drain.

Positive Elements

Fear is a funny thing. It can cause us to shrink into ourselves and turn cold and selfish. But when we find the courage to face our fears, we become better people.

Bill Denbrough, Georgie’s older brother, has as much reason as anyone to be terrified of what’s lurking under Derry’s streets. But the boy, about 12 years old, is determined to find his brother—or at least find out what happened to him. He implores his friends to help him on his quest, telling them (quite truthfully in context) that it’s up to them to deal with the evil underneath. “What happens when another Georgie goes missing?” he asks his six friends.

Not everyone is particularly interested in following Bill on this crusade. But they stick together (mostly) and form what they informally call the Losers’ Club. And there’s something about their bond that seems to work. The movie tells us that we’re stronger together than apart, that when we work together we can do what would seem to be impossible.

The kids’ bond is even effective when dealing with more real-world dangers, too. While each member of the Losers’ Club has suffered mightily at the hands of Derry’s bullies (led by the truly sadistic ruffian Henry Bowers), together they find the strength and the will to stand up for themselves and others (albeit sometimes in violent ways).

Spiritual Elements

Pennywise’s power is inherently supernatural. While he often shows up as a clown, the evil inside the monster shifts shapes at will—transforming into everything from a living painting subject to a little boy. And while the movie never overtly tells us that Pennywise is a demonic entity, the story’s imagery often ties the clown to Christian depictions of hell: At one point, Pennywise introduces himself by dancing in front of a wall of fire.

Stan, one of Bill’s friends, is Jewish—the son of the local rabbi, in fact. He’s preparing for his bar mitzvah, and we see him attempting to read from the Torah in a Jewish synagogue. Some of Stan’s friends quiz him about what a bar mitzvah is and joke about circumcision. A bully uses Stan’s kippah as a Frisbee. We briefly see the exterior of a church.

Sexual Content

Let’s talk about Beverly, the only female member of the Losers’ Club. For years, she’s been the victim of vicious rumors at school, accusing the girl (all of 13 years old) of sleeping around. (We hear her called various uncouth names, and one of her supposed paramours taunts her by grabbing and stroking his crotch.) Some of the Club members believe the rumors at first—pointing to a school play in which she kissed the leading man. “You can’t fake that kind of passion,” one of them sagely says. But Beverly later tells Bill that the rumors aren’t true: She’s only kissed one boy.

While that may indeed be true, she also seems to hide an abusive secret: incest. While the film never explicitly tells us that Beverly’s father has sexually assaulted her, everything we see suggests as much. Her dad repeatedly asks Beverly if she’s still his “little girl,” stroking her hair and shoulders. She obviously fears him. And Beverly’s father also asks her whether she’s doing “womanly things” with the boys she’s hanging out with, then throws her to the ground as if attempting to rape her.

Beverly is an object of fascination for the other Club members as well. When they go swimming in a lake, they strip down to their underwear and splash around. And afterward, when Beverly lies sunning herself in a bra and panties, the boys stare at her—as much in wonder as lustfully—when she’s not looking. Both Bill and Ben have crushes on Beverly: Ben writes her a brief love poem, and both wind up kissing her. (She returns the kiss of one.)

It’s worth noting that Pennywise capitalizes on what people fear the most. And the film may suggest that Beverly fears turning into a woman (perhaps because of her father?). While her friends are chased by clowns or leprosy victims, Beverly is attacked by blood and hair shooting out of her bathroom sink drain (possibly representing the harbingers of adolescence). When she confronts Pennywise itself, his mouth opens impossibly wide and turns into a massive, toothy slit—perhaps a visual echo of the myth of the vagina dentata.

Boys in the Losers’ Club frequently make obscene, sexually charged jokes about masturbation, the size of their anatomies, their sexual experiences or prowess, and the supposed promiscuity of one another’s mothers.

Elsewhere, a girl scrawls “loser” on someone’s cast. The cast’s wearer tries to change the middle letter so the words read “lover.” Beverly flirts with a very old, creepy pharmacist—distracting him while her friends make off with some needed medical supplies.

Violent Content

Arguably, IT’ s most graphic moment takes place in the movie’s opening minutes and involves poor, doomed Georgie. When the boy reaches into a storm drain to retrieve his boat from the lurking Pennywise, the clown’s rat-like teeth suddenly turn into rows and rows of fangs. He bites into the boy’s arm, and the next thing we see is the little lad—missing an arm—frantically trying to crawl away from the drain. He doesn’t make it: He’s pulled in, leaving behind a roadway stained by blood and rain.

That’s just the beginning of the grotesque horrors awaiting us.

A man gets stabbed in the throat with a knife, and his blood coats his body and the chair he sits in. A monstrous mouth clamps down on someone’s face, leaving behind bloody tooth marks. Someone breaks an arm in a fall, with the arm wrenched into a sickening angle. (A friend painfully sets the arm later.)

Henry literally carves the first letter of his name into someone’s belly, and later he nearly plays target practice with a cat. Mike, a member of the Losers’ Club, works with his grandfather in a meat packing plant that apparently processes sheep. We see one animal shot in the head with a bolt gun (a small spray of blood accompanies the act); other sheep are killed in the same way just off camera.

Dead people—either truly walking dead corpses or creations born of Pennywise’s bag of tricks—shamble through the movie in all their stalking grotesquery. One such manifestation looks like a leper, with parts of his face eaten away. Other zombie-like beings haunt the sewers. Blackened hands reach out from a door, as if trying to escape an inferno below. We briefly see the top half of a body (apparently bisected) hanging from chains but still alive. A headless boy chases someone. An old photo shows a boy’s severed head lodged in a tree. People get thrown around. Supernatural entities are hit and skewered repeatedly. A child is apparently shot in the head with a bolt gun.

Beverly is attacked by her father. Someone falls from a tremendous height, never to be seen again. A man is hit in the groin and, later, coldcocked by the lid of a toilet tank. He lies on the bathroom floor, either unconscious or dead, with blood pooling around his head. People pelt each other with rocks, sometimes leaving bloody marks on their foreheads. Members of the Losers’ Club make a pact that involves cutting their palms with a piece of glass and holding each other’s hands.

We learn that Derry has been the scene of unimaginable tragedies in the past, including an Easter-morning blast that killed 102 (including 88 children).

Crude or Profane Language

Bad news: We hear plenty of bad language here. Worse news: Almost all of it comes from the mouths of children. The f-word is used about 40 times. The s-word is uttered nearly 25 times. God’s name is misused twice, Jesus’ name three times. We also hear “a–,” “d–n,” “h—,” “t-ts” and “f-g.” We see at least one obscene gesture.

Drug and Alcohol Content

While her friends swipe medical supplies from a drug store, Beverly makes off with a pack of cigarettes. A bully smokes. Beverly’s father is shown drinking sometimes—a regular habit for him, the movie suggests.

Other Negative Elements

Bill, suffering some sort of sickness, talks about vomiting. The kids splash around in sewage “gray water.” Beverly has a bunch of disgusting trash dumped on top her while she’s in a bathroom stall. Henry Bowers licks his hand and smears spittle across someone’s face. Losers’ Club members make a ton of grotesque jokes at each other’s expense. Someone’s mother is deceptively manipulative.

It takes a lot out of a kid to deal with a supernatural entity that wants to kill and eat you. And finally, Stan—the quiet, studious son of a rabbi—has had enough.

“This isn’t fun !” he hollers at Bill. “This is scary and disgusting!”

The same might be said about this movie.

Listen, I understand that some folks will likely find IT “fun.” There’s a reason why Hollywood keeps making horror movies, and why people keep seeing them. Sometimes people like to be scared. (And as someone who enjoys a good roller coaster ride now and then, I get that.)

And IT —for all the many faults catalogued above—does at least offer a certain moral with its massacres. Our innocent protagonists are doing what they feel is right and what they feel they must, pushing back against an unimaginable and spiritual evil.

I recently talked with Gary Dauberman, who wrote the screenplay for IT , about those themes. He explained why he has a special affinity for writing supernatural horror stories.

“I think that has to do with me really being a believer that there’s something that’s greater than all of us, and that death is not an end,” he told me. “So writing and researching these stories kind of reaffirms that for me in a way. Even if there’s a demonic presence, I’m always going, ‘If there’s a demonic presence, that means that somewhere out there there’s good.’ And a lot of times in these movies, the good comes from within.”

We see that goodness displayed in IT’ s young protagonists, without question. The movie, for all its content, still exudes a strange sense of innocence. It can almost feel at times like a Steven Spielberg coming-of-age caper, albeit one with far more f-words and senseless mutilations.

And therein lies IT’ s problem. The movie’s heart doesn’t dispel all the terror and carnage and extraordinarily adult problems that our young heroes must deal with. It does not expunge the fact that the adults here are often shown as impotent impediments to the task at hand. It does not mitigate our heroes’ own questionable words and deeds—the constant swearing or the near skinny-dipping or the shoplifting. A bevy of children may star in IT , but they’d be ill-advised to watch it.

Pennywise lured young Georgie into the drain by promising fun and adventure. This movie promises the same. But for those who venture down this drain, it will be a dark, haunting trip indeed.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

Latest Reviews

Challengers

Boy Kills World

Spy x Family Code: White

Villains Inc.

Weekly reviews straight to your inbox.

It (2017) - Blu-ray Review

{jatabs type="content" position="top" height="auto" skipAnim="true" mouseType="click" animType="animFade"}

[tab title="Movie Review"]

That’s not to say that It isn’t scary. It is. But everything else in the story is just so delightfully familiar and endearing, it’s a blast to be put on the edge of our seats with the knowledge that something so unsettling is lurking just beneath the surface. And in the age of dime-a-dozen horror flicks that struggle to invent the next big gimmick, it’s actually quite refreshing when the thrills and chills provide the much-needed break from all the pleasantness. How’s that for something new?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the film’s unsettling moments come from a demented clown that lives in the sewer system of Derry, Maine, a small burg that stands in for Anytown USA. The clown is a shapeshifting predator that emerges from his cesspool every 27 years to feed on the fears of his chosen prey: the town’s children. Don’t be fooled by the clown’s penchant for offering colorful balloons nor by his vaudevillian moniker. Pennywise, the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård) is a bad, bad dude who would just as soon hug your face with his rows of detachable teeth as he would throw you peanuts. Skarsgård absolutely sinks himself into the role and gives us one of the most frightening, yet memorable, villains in recent memory. Working clowns around the world are afraid of the ramifications, and they should be.

It is teeming with loads of heart and soul provided by a ragtag group of seven middle school outcasts. They call themselves the Losers Club and each has been terrorized in some way, whether it be by the local pack of school bullies, or by a dysfunctional home life. But they gain strength in being together and, as is the case with many of King’s novels, the story’s beauty comes from the way he juxtaposes fear and terror against the experience of growing up. Smartly, Muschietti never loses sight of that, and as a result, It is frightening, fun, relevant, and meaningful, all at the same time.

Leading our pack of lovable losers is Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) whose world is rocked when little brother, Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) mysteriously disappears while chasing a paper boat into a storm drain. Unsatisfied by his father’s calls to face the fact that his brother is dead, Bill joins up with his group of friends after school to find out why the town’s children go missing at six times the national average.

The Losers Club is rounded out by chubby kid and de facto town historian Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), foul-mouthed Richie (Finn Wolfhard), who stands in as the comic relief, cute-girl-with-a-bad-reputation Beverly (Sophia Lillis), and others whose charming chemistry gives us a strong sense that the film belongs right alongside Stranger Things or even Stand By Me . In fact, there’s a nice little montage that shows the kids walking along railroad tracks as a train goes by. It is brilliant little flourishes like these that set It apart from the crowd. In fact, we occasionally wonder what the film might have been had the horror elements been dropped altogether. Those heartfelt moments are that strong by themselves.

It isn’t without its problems, however. A second act that slogs a bit, coupled with some tonal inconsistencies throughout, keep the experience from floating to its intended lofty heights. Also, Muschietti very nearly overuses his Pennywise to the point of diminishing returns. The more we see of him, the less effective his demonic dealings become. And a bit more background into the wall-eyed clown and his motivations might have lent the proceedings an even stronger sense of danger.

Steeped in a heavy 80s-drenched look and feel, It jumps on the current nostalgia bandwagon and plays to our childhood memories while at the same time preying on the things that we fear the most: being attacked by the things that we fear the most.

[tab title="Details"]

MPAA Rating: R for violence/horror, bloody images, and for language. Runtime: 135 mins Director : Andy Muschietti Writer: Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga Cast: Bill Skarsgård, Jaeden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard Genre : Horror Tagline: You'll float too. Memorable Movie Quote: "It's summer! We're supposed to be having fun!" Theatrical Distributor: New Line Cinema Official Site: itthemovie.com/ Release Date: September 8, 2017 DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: January 9, 2018. Synopsis : When children begin to disappear in the town of Derry, Maine, a group of young kids are faced with their biggest fears when they square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.

[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]

Blu-ray Details:

Home Video Distributor: Warner Bros. Available on Blu-ray - January 9, 2018 Screen Formats: 2.40:1 Subtitles : English SDH Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1; English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit) Discs: Blu-ray Disc; Two-disc set; Digital copy; Movies Anywhere; DVD copy Region Encoding: Locked to Region A

Warner Bros presents It on 1080p with an Ultra HD Blu-Ray Combo Pack release that stuns with its bloody goodness; details are layered and the corpses are vivid.  It’s a quiet affair, of course, as the story takes center stage but, with crisp greens and soiled browns, everything feels very, very lived in and expressive.  Interior details are fierce and black levels never disappoint, even fibers are textured.  There’s a lot of dark magic involved in the underground and the visuals of suspended children are sharp.  Details in the location are great and locations are triggered with a crispness that only 1080p can provide.  The aspect ratio is 2.39:1.  A strong Dolby TrueHD 7.1 and/or Dolby Atmos provides the surround sound and adds a definite kick to the dark and gory visuals.

Blu-ray Supplements:

Commentary :

Special Features:

With a three featurettes concerning the making of It and a solid selection of deleted scenes, Warner Bros gives fans something to be thrilled about with their handling of It’s debut on blu with this their Blu-ray Combo Pack, which includes the theatrical version of in HD and standard definition. A digital version of the film in HD is also included.  In Pennywise Lives! fans are treated to see how Bill Skarsgård prepared for the role of the iconic dancing clown; in The Loser’s Club we get to see profiles of the cast of courage during the production of the movie; and in Author of Fear we get the homegrown roots of King’s clown prince of terror.  There are also 11 deleted/extended scenes that give viewers a bit more characterization of the kids.  But, truly, the best additional bit is from King himself.

• Pennywise Lives!
• The Losers’ Club
• Author of Fear
• Deleted Scenes

[tab title="Trailer"]

[tab title="Art"]

New in Theaters/VOD

New on Home Video

• The Death of John Belushi at the Chateau Marmont
• The Death of Our Gang's Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer
• The Ghost Writer - Blu-ray Review
• Shutter Island - Blu-ray Review
• Extraordinary Measures - Blu-ray Review

Movie Trailers

• Trailer Watch - JANE Season 2
• Trailer Watch: DINOSAUR
• Trailer Watch: BLOODLINE KILLER
• Trailer Watch: KIM'S VIDEO
• Trailer Watch - RADIOACTIVE: THE WOMEN OF THREE MILE ISLAND

BADass B-Movies

Movie Reviews

Morbidly Hollywood

• Colorado Street Suicide Bridge
• Death of a Princess - The Story of Grace Kelly's Fatal Car Crash
• Joaquin Phoenix 911 Call - River Phoenix - Viper Room
• Screen Legend Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79
• Suicide and the Hollywood Sign - The Girl Who Jumped from the Hollywood Sign
• The Amityville Horror House
• The Black Dahlia Murder - The Death of Elizabeth Short
• The Death of Actress Jane Russell
• The Death of Brandon Lee
• The Death of Chris Farley
• The Death of Dominique Dunne
• The Death of George Reeves - the Original Superman

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Challengers Link to Challengers
• Abigail Link to Abigail
• Arcadian Link to Arcadian

New TV Tonight

• The Jinx: Season 2
• Knuckles: Season 1
• The Big Door Prize: Season 2
• THEM: The Scare: Season 2
• Velma: Season 2
• Secrets of the Octopus: Season 1
• Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
• Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story: Season 1
• We're Here: Season 4

Most Popular TV on RT

• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Fallout: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• The Sympathizer: Season 1
• Ripley: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• Under the Bridge: Season 1
• Sugar: Season 1
• A Gentleman in Moscow: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Under the Bridge Link to Under the Bridge
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

DC Animated Movies In Order: How to Watch 54 Original and Universe Films

The Best TV Seasons Certified Fresh at 100%

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

Watch An Exclusive Pixar Studio Tour, Plus Inside Out 2 Secrets From The Set

Weekend Box Office Results: Civil War Earns Second Victory in a Row

• Trending on RT
• Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver
• The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
• Play Movie Trivia

It: Chapter Two

Where to watch.

Rent It: Chapter Two on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

It: Chapter Two proves bigger doesn't always mean scarier for horror sequels, but a fine cast and faithful approach to the source material keep this follow-up afloat.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Andy Muschietti

Jessica Chastain

Beverly Marsh

James McAvoy

Bill Denbrough

Richie Tozier

Isaiah Mustafa

Mike Hanlon

Ben Hanscom

Best Movies to Stream at Home

Movie news & guides, this movie is featured in the following articles., critics reviews.

Straight From a Movie

Pensive Thoughts on Paper – Movie Reviews & Analyses

It Movie Review (2017) | A Perfect Paragon of Dark Poetry | Full Analysis with Spoilers

If you think It Movie is limited to horror, you are dead wrong. In fact, to me, it even didn’t feel like one. So what is it that makes Stephen King ‘s It one of a kind? The metaphor, yes! If you are watching the flick reading between its frames, you are definitely going to enjoy the flick more. I will acquaint you with how beautiful Stephen King’s fancy is by doing a proper analysis of the movie. Even though this years’ The Dark Tower failed to do him justice, It Movie succeeds in a lot of ways.

It Movie is really beautiful if you see what it wishes to show you, the allegory in it and how wonderfully it builds itself on children’s fear and fantasies. Andy Muschietti , who was also the director of Mama , understands what Stephen King had in mind when he put a fantastical clown to paper. His direction provides perspective to the concept of a monster that emanates from a whimsical head.

Without wasting any more time let’s skip to the plot; there’s so much to share.

Plot of It Movie Full Analysis (Spoilers)

The movie picks pace caving in on a tragedy in Derry, a fictitious town that Stephen King often uses. Like any other place in the world the town has a history with accidents, where children have gone missing, people have ended up being dead, and stuff like that. But just like any other grown up who terms it as nature’s wish, or calls it something inevitable, something one doesn’t have control over, people of Derry too, don’t bother to investigate such matters.

Unless the thing happens to you, of course, and boils down to a personal level, no one really cares to bat an eye. So it happens with Bill Denbrough ( Jaeden Lieberher ). His little brother Georgie Denbrough ( Jackson Robert Scott ) goes missing one day. The primal reason why things become more personal to him.

Prologue of IT Movie Explained

As part of the prologue of It movie, we see Bill making his little brother Georgie a boat to help him go play in the rain. In one of the scenes where he asks him to fetch him wax from the cellar, we can see Georgie being really afraid of the dark and fidgeting before venturing there.

As he makes his way down, he finds his mother playing the piano busy in her own world. The lack of conversation there as little Georgie makes his way down is suggestive of how the grown ups are always lost in their own work. It is a child’s perspective about a grown-up’s world. They don’t wish any part of a child’s life. A child’s fancy, his insecurities, his fear have no effect on them. Once we grow up we all grow out of the things we once held close to our heart.

Georgie somehow manages to grab the wax despite being absolutely terrified. Remember this bit because it will be important in figuring out why Pennywise attacked Georgie in the first place.

Pennywise the Clown

We understand how close Bill and Georgie really were in all those moments of Bill helping Georgie out with the boat. Georgie thanks him as he makes his way out in the downpour to test the sailboat. That’s where we see his boat ending up stranded and then him being attacked by a psychotic clown named Pennywise living in the sewers.

A storm blew me away. Blew the whole circus away.

We see Pennywise sweet talking Georgie before chopping his hand off and then taking him into the sewers with him.

Eight Months Later

Eight months later, we see a homeschooled boy Mike Hanlon ( Chosen Jacobs ) unable to pull the trigger on a sheep. His innocence is being stripped away by the business he is in. His parents had died when he was young, and he is given a hard time by his guardian who is trying to make a man out of him so young.

There are two places you can be in this world. You can be out here like us, or you can be in there like them.

The world is full of two kinds of people. The weak ones who take orders submissively and the ones who sit in the driving seat giving orders to the forbearing. You have to take charge, overcome your fears, and insecurities or you will end up being pushed around. This dialogue, in fact, is the entire crux of It Movie.

Just then we see a sheep being pushed in for slaughtering as the camera switches to another flock of sheep – Bill and his friends Richie Tozier ( Finn Wolfhard ), Eddie Kaspbrak ( Jack Dylan Grazer ), Stanley Uris ( Wyatt Olef )  making their way out of their classes. The similarity is just perfect. They are meek and driven by a shepherd called School, just as the sheep in the real world have no choice but to get herded, they too are powerless insignificant entities who move around as demanded. They choose to call themselves the Losers club, because of how badly they fare against bullies.

Other Characters in It Movie

They dump their books since it’s the last day of their term at Derry High School. Meek as they are, they are constantly bullied by Henry Bowers’ ( Nicholas Hamilton ) gang. We see a minor face-off, the flow of which gets obstructed by Henry’s father, who by the way is a cop, overlooking them. The cops are there to help Mrs. Ripsom who has recently lost her daughter Betty Ripsom. You see Derry is notorious for such cases. But the police has been helpless all this time, unable to figure out the cause.

In answer to a remark made by Richie where he wishes the Bowers gang to go missing, Eddie replies:

They are the ones doing it.

We are introduced to the character of Beverly Marsh ( Sophia Lillis ) another unfortunate kid who is constantly bullied by a girl gang.

There are rumours about her being a slut which she can’t control and has learned to live with. She runs into Ben Hanscom ( Jeremy Ray Taylor ) a sweet kid, who secretly has a crush on her.

Your hair is winter fire, January Embers, My heart burns there too.

As Bill returns to his house he finds his dad working in their workshop, and that he has discovered that Bill has stolen the sewer plans of Derry and that he was secretly working on a project. It is hard for Bill to accept that Georgie is dead, and according to his theory, Derry dumps everything into The Barrens underneath so it’s possible that Georgie must be in The Barrens. Furious at Bill, his father storms off taking away the sewage map.

Next time you wanna take something from my office, just ask.

The above dialogue is quite ironical because we know that his father will never give in to his wants.

The Fear Quotient

As we chug forward we notice that each character is afraid of something. Call it their vivid imagination as we often tend to have as a child. All their fears have unique characteristics. It amplifies whatever they are afraid of, and even though we as an audience might feel uncomfortable with it going nowhere, like how can a child stay normal after experiencing a terrifying event like that, right?

But if you pay attention, we have never really paid heed to a child when he talks about a monster under his bed, or in the closet. We have never really understood their perspective, and that’s why it is hard for us to get them when they see what they see. We are watching the flick from the perspective of a child, and that’s why it bothers us when we see them in pain. But as a parent, we fail to be on their very own pedestal to fathom them truly. How badly could they be needing us when they claim to have seen something formidable!

That’s what happens in IT Movie as well. Even though frightening things keep happening, one after the other to all the children, there is no closure. Because, it is a subconscious fear factor that stays with us when we are alone. And it’s not like we are all alone by ourselves the entire day as a child. So that fear factor keeps coming and going all the time.

This is probably one of those difficult bits to understand, only when you are not thinking about it from a child’s perspective. It confuses you because you think the movie is going nowhere, but in a way it is. Soon we find out about that.

Individual Qualms

Mike is afraid of people in a burning house since it had to do with his parents who were burnt alive. Stanley is afraid of a surreal portrait in the library a painting he wishes he hadn’t seen. Eddie is afraid of his mom who worries too much about him and his allergies, of not taking his pills on time, and sick lepers. Ben is afraid of bullies, being a part of history of Derry, of Easter Eggs, of being left alone, of grown up people from Derry who never stand up for the underdog. Beverly is afraid of her leering father. Bill is afraid to let go of Georgie. He still hopes he is alive even though he knows deep down the truth. He hates the fact that everybody moves on as if nothing has happened.

Why Nothing Happens to the Kids

Interestingly, all the weird happenings end up not hurting the kids. The reason being they are all an abstract amplified versions of their fear. They vanish when that modicum of fear goes away. In case of Mike, that fear of watching hands coming out of a slaughter house, gets interrupted when Bowers and his gang intercept him with their car. His attention then goes to the mundane where a butcher was coming out of the open door. In case of Stanley, the portrait lady chases him out of the library he was in. Going to another room he wasn’t as afraid eliminated his fear. His fear was limited to that library.

For Eddie, he is more afraid of not taking his pills on time, afraid of catching allergies and an image of a leper that chases him into the haunted house.

If you lived here you’d be home by now.

Pennywise appears then but since Eddie was already close to making an escape, paving a ‘way out’, the chance of him running away had made him a little bold from inside, thus somewhat curtailing his fear. It should be noted that the fear takes form when he sees the haunted house, and hears his pill alarm.

For Ben, it was the librarian who accidentally barges in as Ben bumps into her. With the presence of someone else, fear becomes nil almost instantly, and thus we see Pennywise giving up the chase.

Everyone has experienced their bit of qualms except Richie whose blunt brazen remarks help him to stay confident most of the time. He isn’t as afraid as his friends, yet at some point, we discover that he is afraid of clowns too.

Meeting with Ben

In one of the scenes where Ben is harassed by the Bowers gang, a car passes by as Ben shouts at them for help. But the people in the car, show sheer indifference and disregard to his plight. It’s like Derry deliberately chooses not to see the misdemeanors around the town. They see something bad happening, they look the other way. We see a balloon showing up there, placing Derry’s disregard once again to the real clown story. It is a perfect set up.

Ben manages to escape somehow as Bowers tries to carve his name on Ben’s tummy.

The Losers club meanwhile stands in a sewage tunnel where they discover Betty Ripsom’s shoe connecting more dots leading to the sewers.

If I was Betty Ripsom I would want us to find me. Georgie too.

Just then Ben runs into the losers club as they take him to a local pharmacy to treat him. That’s where the Losers club run into Beverly and their friendship thrives thereon. Meanwhile one of the members of the Bowers gang Patrick Hockstetter ( Owen Teague ) ends up getting lured into the sewers. He is then attacked by Pennywise and goes missing too.

History of Derry

As the kids hang out together, Ben acquaints them with the history of the town.

Derry is not like any town I’ve been in before. People die or disappear, six times the national average. And that’s just grown ups. Kids are worse. Way, way worse.

Ben shows them more of his researched work where he tells how Derry used to be a beaver trapping town first and how the entire camp disappeared with rumors of plague or Indians.

It’s like one day everybody just woke up and left.

From there they gather that the trails of people missing ran dry at the Well House. In hopes to find the Well house someday, children retire.

The World of the Fearful Kids

Beverly hears voices coming from her wash basin. It’s all the children who went missing calling her out to “float” with them. Probably one of them is Betty Ripsom’s voice.

When she tries to investigate, her hair that she had cut some days ago ends up strangling her, and the whole basin bursts open with blood. It paints the entire washroom in red. On listening to the noise her father shows up, but he couldn’t see the blood.

This is another one of those moments wherein you can say grown ups are blind to the world of children. They fail to understand the fancy a child deals with. For children everything is real, but from a perspective of a grown up man, who has outgrown childish imagination, things don’t make sense.

The fact is once again proven when she invites The Loser Club to clean the bathroom.

Beverly: My dad couldn’t see it, I thought I might be crazy. Eddie: Well if you are crazy, then we are all crazy.

Bumping into Mike

You see Richie is deliberately kept as a lookout by Stephen King. The lad is bold, and he might not have seen the blood in there. With children cleaning the bathroom it might have seemed stupid to Richie. Later Richie brands them as imagining things. He easily demarcs the boundary of fear and courage. Fear – the only thing that helps feed the clown which they all fail to get.

It is good that the kids begin to talk about their fears, which so far they had kept repressed and to themselves. It was Beverly’s incident that led the talk to happen. They all talk about how they have been witnessing a clown when they find out about Mike being in trouble. The Bowers gang is trying to beat the crap out of Mike, as Mike is dead scared, the fear making him see the clown. That’s a spooky scene, by the way, Pennywise eating a hand, and then using it to wave at him.

The Losers Club intervenes and a rock war ensues. Saving Mike the Losers club storm out victorious against the gang of Bowers. It’s clear that when they are together they can overcome fear. Only a glint, the fire they are yet to see.

The Research in It Movie

Bill is staring at a poster of a new missing child. Underneath is the poster of Betty.

It’s like she has been forgotten now that someone else is missing.

Ben figures out that all the historical happenings and destruction have a pattern to it.

This stuff seems to happen every 27 years.

That after 27 years it returns, and then goes into hibernation for another 27.

They also figure out that it might be affecting those who are afraid. Each one of them is afraid of different things, and all these things are frightening them to the core.

Maybe none of this is real.

They rule out the possibility that it could all be a bad dream which, as a matter fact, everyone was secretly thinking about till this point.

Going After the Clown

They all step in to do more research in Bill’s workshop where they discover that every incident ends up connecting to the Well House. They figure out the location of the Well house to be 29 Neibolt Street, but the frames begin to play all by themselves and there’s this old picture of Bill’s mom where her photo is not visible. Pennywise replaces her in the picture and then spooks the children out by stepping into the workshop in a gigantic form.

Now the only way to overcome fear is to create an escape route or maybe open the blinds for the daylight to come in. So that’s how they narrowly escape Pennywise by opening the shutters.

Bill wishes to go after It. When his friends begin to chicken out, he goes by himself. They follow him to the creepy house as Bill tells them how he feels without stuttering for the first time:

What happens if another Georgie goes missing or another Betty or Ed Corcoran or one of us? Are you just going to pretend it didn’t happen like everyone else in this town? Because I can’t. I go home and all I see is that Georgie isn’t there. His clothes, his toys, his stupid stuffed animals but he isn’t. So walking into this house for me is easier than walking into my own.

In the Well House

Richie finds his own missing poster in the house that freaks him out. Something that Pennywise wanted to happen – to make every character afraid. Fear makes them vulnerable and that’s how Pennywise becomes stronger. In the Well House, Eddie falls from the first floor owing to his own fear of leper.

Richie and Bill are individually isolated in different rooms, however, they are together and that’s why they are a bit stronger.

With Eddie left alone, Pennywise appears from a fridge and tries to attack him.

Bill and Richie find three doors and on taking one of them they are scared shitless. But then Bill tries to embolden Richie by reminding him about how nothing is real.

This isn’t real. Remember the missing kid poster. That wasn’t real. So this isn’t real.

That is like a stake in the heart for Pennywise because it beats fear. He was about to harm Eddie, when he realizes that Bill and Richie, despite being really afraid of what was behind the door, have managed to reenter it. It vanquishes fear, the very purpose of It. Walking through the same door they end up to assist Eddie where Pennywise says:

This isn’t real enough for you, Billy? I am not real enough for you? It was real enough for Georgie.

Overcoming Fear in It Movie

As he tries to attack them Beverly barges in lancing Pennywise with an arrow. Fear is unkillable. It can only exist or feel itself withering. It can intensify itself or can be belittled by lack of it. So, Pennywise doesn’t die with that arrow in his head. He turns around using the arrow as a prop to scare the kids even more. Yes, he looks scary and he becomes successful in making the kids more afraid. But who is more afraid? We can see Beverly being terrified so he draws his attention towards her.

As he turns around with the arrow he injures Ben.

Fear takes a different form then. It becomes contemptible and less pure. Kids were all together, they were worried about each other, besides Pennywise was hurt and looked vulnerable, so he decides to take a back seat there. Bill isn’t afraid of Pennywise and wishes to end his reign once and for all.

Don’t let it get away.

He follows him to find his true lair which was inside a well into the sewers. But has to come back owing to Eddie’s condition.

The Breakup in It Movie

Eddie’s mom takes away her child cursing the kids to be akin to monsters. (Irony?)

Bill is keen on getting back at Pennywise but the madness is too much for the rest of the kids to take. Bill and Richie get into a fight.

This is what it wants. It wants to divide us. We were all together when we hurt it. That’s why we are still alive.

The Losers club split with that, getting consumed into their boring lives once again, the one without each other. We see each one of them taking up chores as asked by their parents or guardians. So why is their world without the influence of It?

You see the mundane is jaded. A world full of adventures is when you begin to imagine things. That happens when you are happy, excited, psyched or afraid. None of them happens for the kids when they are not with each other.

The Bowers Quandary

Meanwhile, we see Bowers being given a hard time by his father.

Look at him now boys! Ain’t nothing like a little fear to make a paper boy crumble.

Bowers is really afraid for the first time in his life. And he finds a balloon too with a gift in his mail box – a knife. It should be well noted how manipulative Pennywise is. Throughout the movie, we see the TV always talking about the clown. It is a beautiful hint at our subconscious trying to play us to the tune of our fears.

Bowers is enraged with embarrassment and wishes to get back at his father. So he drives a knife through his neck while he is sleeping. One might say it was Pennywise who did it by manipulating him. But if you really look at it, the clown is a figment that simply amplifies what you wish to do, or whatever you are afraid of. Since Derry is a forgiving forgetting town where crime walks loose, it gives wings to people who wish to get involved in criminal activities.

In the end, he sees the clown on the TV asking him to kill them all. With that, he meant the Losers club who had hurt It.

Beverly’s Stand in It Movie

If you notice every child from the Losers club had a fairly normal life except for Beverly who was forced to live under the ogling eyes of her father.

Are you still my girl?

In an unseen set of events, Beverly takes a stand against her father and hits him with a toilet lid in self-defense. Pennywise shows up because with his father gone she was all alone, and quite petrified, consumed by the fear of what she had done, and what she would do.

When Beverly doesn’t show up to meet Bill, he gets worried about her and decides to pay her a visit at her house. There he finds her father in a pool of blood, and the wall is painted with:

You die if you try.

Bill goes to Richie for help and they reconcile because Pennywise had attacked one of them.

It got Beverly.

Eddie stands up against her mother too, overcoming his fear for the first time. She tries to stop him from going out with his friends.

You know what these are? They are gazebos! They are bullshit!

Children get together and prepare for war.

The Ending of It Movie Explained

As they enter their doom, Stanley is reluctant for a while to which Bill says:

If we stick together, all of us, we will win.

They all go to the well, (Pennywise’s entry exit point) and go down one by one. When Mike’s the only one left, Bowers shows up attacking him from behind. Mike spears him into the well as Bowers dies.

Meanwhile, Beverly wakes up in It’s lair and sees all the floating children that had gone missing. Pennywise shows up to hurt her but she says:

I am not afraid of you.

Which bothers Pennywise.

You will be.

It uses his power to make her float like the others, showing her a different world.

Stan ends up getting isolated. His nightmare – the painting lady shows up and attacks him. It hurts him however the rest of the kids show up in just the nick of time to help him. Bill starts seeing Georgie and follows him. Ends up in the lair of Pennywise where he sees Beverly floating mid way in the air. His first priority, however, is Georgie.

I will come back for you Beverly.

Meanwhile the rest of the kids find Beverly floating moonstruck.

They bring her down and Ben kisses her bringing her back to life. You see love overcomes fear. Fear is faltering, hesitation and lack of confidence. Love is bold, confident and strong. Right after the kiss, Beverly realizes that it was Ben who had written that poem for her.

January Embers. My heart burns there too.

Bill’s Acceptance

Probably the most emotional scene in the entire movie is when Bill finds Georgie.

What took you so long?

All the emotions gush out when you feel the empathy kick in.

I was looking for you all this time.

All this time Bill secretly knew that his brother was dead. But he hadn’t given up on hope. He hadn’t grieved for him the way he should have. He was yet to acquaint himself with the bitter truth.

I wanna go home.

He wanted that moment of reconciliation with his loving brother. Because it was hard for him to accept that Georgie was dead.

I want more than anything for you to be home.

But he finally comes to term with reality and shoots Georgie believing what the world had been telling him all this time. Finally accepting the truth with a heavy heart.

It Means War

Georgie becomes Pennywise and attacks everybody, as the concluding war begins.

In those final moments, Pennywise grabs hold of Bill and says:

I’ll take him! I’ll take all of you! I’ll feast on your flesh as I feed on your fear, or you’ll just leave us be, I will take him. Only him, and I will have my long rest and you will all grow to live and thrive and lead happy lives until old age takes you back to the weeds.

It is a choice Pennywise offers the kids in IT movie. If they were to think like adults, they wouldn’t mind leaving one of them behind. Like the people in Derry who were alright with people missing and disappearing, as long as it didn’t bother them.

The Final Assault in IT Movie

But these kids stood for each other and so they attack the clown until it takes different forms to scare the bajesus out of them. Together they get rid of the menace by destroying him (overcoming their own fear).

You couldn’t kill Beverly coz she wasn’t afraid, and we are neither, not anymore. Now you are the one who’s afraid because you are gonna starve.

In the end, we see the clown fragmenting before disappearing into a pit.

For the first time, Bill truly accepts the death of Georgie as he sees his clothes in the sewer. He cries like he has never before, coming to terms with the fact that his brother has really died.

Guys kids are floating down.

The Epilogue of It Movie

We see The Losers Club together once again. Beverly is telling them about how it felt when she was floating.

We were our parent’s ages. I just remember how we felt.

With that, it is hard not to tack “floating” against something that shows a kid the dreams about growing up. Kids always fantasize about growing up, what will they do, what will they become. It is a life they imagine to be living. While for the kids in the movie growing up is like being killed, killing your fantasies, imagination and the beautiful world that no one sees.

They swear in blood – a symbolism for them not being afraid, to have finally overcome their fears.

Swear! If it isn’t dead if it ever comes back, we will come back too.

Eventually Bill the lad who had been afraid of things who had finally learned how to overcome his fears runs up to Beverly to plant a kiss on her.

You can order It movie 2017 from here:

Thinking Out Loud (Theories Behind IT Movie)

I understand It movie is intended to be seen the way it is presented without any hidden meanings. But the work of Stephen King is a result of careful thought. To the people who fail to read between the lines the story could be just about a clown from a different world who has come to live on earth, who wakes up every 27 years to feed on children and their fear. But for me, I think Pennywise is more of an abstract form.

I will try to explain:

First Theory

Derry is a notorious underdeveloped and lawless town where people have to deal with crimes on a daily basis. The disappearance of children I like to think is as a result of bullies, perverts and child molesters (an exemplary form we saw in Beverly’s father). Children disappearing is a thing that bothers only the children who wish to do something about it. Those are the kids imagining a villain trying to stop them from uncovering the truth. Fear is their enemy and all the elements that try to stop them from uncovering the real truth, right from Eddie’s mother to Beverly’s father to Bill’s and to Bowers, are all companions of that enemy. They are trying to stop their crucial summertime research about the disappearance of kids.

Second Theory

Another theory I can work up with is what if Pennywise had been some kind of a real neglected person who had wished to make Derry laugh once? He could have been a regular person, who must have been admired for his circus. When he said, “A storm blew me away”, I think it is a crisp metaphor for Derry’s disregard for the circus that once might have existed in the town. Something might have happened to him and his business that would have forced Pennywise down the gutters, taken his life in the process. Derry is a repulsive town with its dark secrets and one could only imagine as to what might have happened to the real clown whose abstract is now such a terrifying reflection as Pennywise.

Another Weird Theory for IT movie

Another theory that I can think of deals with the term floating. Floating is something that insinuates that people are moving away towards better prospects. Derry isn’t the town that it once used to be. They have been leaving Derry in search of better jobs, as Beverly’s vision stated. It was a pleasant vision for her that showed them how they could come out of that hell hole called Derry and become something substantial in life. She didn’t remember what they were doing but she remembered how they felt like. So they could be just leaving the town and the term ‘missing’ could be just implying that. Kids think a lot of things. So everything could be just their rare form of imagination.

The Final Verdict of IT movie

Whatever must have been the original thought that forced Stephen King to present such a beautiful novel, the movie adaptation nails it. It movie is beautifully done by Andy Muschietti who forces us to live the flick as if it were our very own story. It takes you back in time, when you used to dream, imagine and fantasize.

It movie should not be missed, should not be just watched for its horror but for its insane story that forces you to think.

Highly recommended for everybody.

You can check out the trailer of It Movie 2017 here:

• Extraordinary Thinking
• Great Story
• Brilliant Acting by the Cast
• Outstanding direction
• Compels you to think
• Not that scary if you wish to watch it as horror

Related Posts

Project Power Movie Review (2020) | An Opportunity Lost

The Menu (2022) Review: An Artist’s Revenge Lampoon

Killers of the Flower Moon Review (2023) | At the Heart of Human Vice

Leave a reply cancel reply.

IT Movie Review: Chapter One

IT Movie Review

I have been waiting to see this film ever since it was announced.  So much so that I actually purchased tickets two weeks before it premiered in theaters.  I saw the 1990 made for television 2-part version when it aired and it terrified me.  I was 13 years old.  I was never afraid of clowns.  I’m still not.  But Pennywise was something different.  He wasn’t just a clown.  He was an evil, devilish entity.  Maybe it was the way Tim Curry portrayed It but boy was he the epitome of frightening.  I went into this telling myself I was not going to compare the original with the current version (too much).  Of course there are going to be differences as the original version was made for television.  I highlight some of those differences below but this new film can stand on its own in the genre.

The acting was fantastic!  Bill Skarsgård did an excellent job as Pennywise.  I was skeptical because I loved Curry’s portrayal but Skarsgård made the role his own.  His version will go down as one of the best in horror history for sure!  There was some CGI as was expected from a modern day horror film but I liked that Skarsgård had some scenes in the film where he was moving as himself.  I don’t even know if you can call the CGI in the 1990 version CGI but whatever it was there was less of it and it showed Curry’s range in the role.  That’s part of why his performance was so good.  Skarsgård, though, played Pennywise as he should.  His performance was menacing, energetic, and mesmerizing.

Wish there was a little less CGI with Pennywise.  It looked really good but I would have loved to see more real life creepy acting from Skarsgård.

IT lived up to everything I expected it to be.  It was funny, creepy AF and nostalgic to its core.  I loved how Muschietti did not make this a carbon copy of the original.  He threw in some classic lines that in my opinion had to be in there.  Beep beep Richie .  It’s hard to make a remake, especially of a horror film, and have it not be criticized before it even comes out.  Fans are typically partial to the original (if its a good one).  But sometimes, they get it right.  This remake was done right.  And although I knew they would eventually make a second part, in the end when the screen read – IT Chapter One, I lost it!  So excited to see what they do when the loser’s club are adults and return to combat Pennywise.  To IT (2017) – Y our hair is winter fire, January embers, my heart burns there too .

• Acting - 9/10 9/10
• Cinematography - 10/10 10/10
• Plot/Screenplay - 9/10 9/10
• Setting/Theme - 10/10 10/10
• Buyability - 9.5/10 9.5/10
• Recyclability - 9/10 9/10
• Entertainment - 9.5/10 9.5/10

About Sonia Rosario

An administrative professional and a writing novice. In this for the love of horror. 1/3 of the fabulous Horror Flick Chicks crew. Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter! Check out the Horror Flick Chicks Podcast streaming now on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts & I Heart Radio!

You may like these posts

Boy Kills World: A Mind-Bending, Ultra-Violent Trip (Review)

DO AUR DO PYAAR (2024): Love Can Survive Marriage But Not This Film

Monkey Man Review: An Action-Packed Debut From Dev Patel

Late Night with the Devil Review: A Deeply Disturbing and Unique Watch

SILENCE 2: THE NIGHT OWL BAR SHOOTOUT Review: A ZEE 5 Global Mystery Thriller

4 thoughts on “ it movie review: chapter one ”.

This was such a great film! The kid actors were so amazing and better than some adult actors! 9.4 out of 10 is a good score for this film!

Glad you enjoyed my review!

I loved the movie the movie,It especially the beginning when Billy’s brother went outside and lost he’s boat. I think that’s the most important part in the movie because that part was interesting and was in the original movie. “It” was so good when I watch the movie i had to go download it on my phone. I like how the director kept the balloon part and the way his home is creepy like Pennywise. To me it had a little humor. The actor who played Pennywise did fantastic. He makes me want to run when I see any type of sewer drain.

Yes the film was so great! Glad you enjoyed it and my review :)

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Subscribe Now! Get features like

• Latest News
• Entertainment
• Real Estate
• RCB vs SRH Live Score
• Election Schedule 2024
• Win iPhone 15
• IPL 2024 Schedule
• IPL Points Table
• IPL Purple Cap
• IPL Orange Cap
• AP Board Results 2024
• The Interview
• Web Stories
• Virat Kohli
• Mumbai News
• Bengaluru News
• Daily Digest

It movie review: One of the best horror films of year. You’ll be haunted for days

It movie review: andy muschietti directs one of the best stephen king horror adaptations ever made - almost as great as the shining, carrie, 1408, or the mist. it floats. and you’ll float too..

It Director - Andy Muschietti Cast - Jaeden Leiberher, Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis, Chosen Jacobs, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Jack Dylan Grazer, Bill Skarsgard Rating - 4/5

It’s a funny time to be Stephen King – but some would say it always is.

The cadaver of the Dark Tower – it was butchered upon release by both fans and critics – is still warm. Mr Mercedes, another adaptation of one of his books – this one for TV – has begun promisingly. Gerald’s Game, yet another adaptation, is coming soon – this month, in fact. Donald Trump has, with predictable childishness, blocked him on Twitter. But we’re not here to talk about any of that.

What we’re here to talk about is – and this is remarkable, considering the sheer number of legitimately great films King’s writing has inspired – a movie that could perhaps be among the best adaptations of his work. Certainly, there is a scene that comes maybe halfway through It that plunges you so gleefully into unexpected gore that it’s almost impossible to not be jolted by memories of The Shining or Carrie – still, even after four decades, the best King adaptations.

It, the novel, is a brick of a book that at 1,300 pages long would be just as useful a murder weapon as it is a source of thrills. It’s a story, like most King stories, about the innocence of childhood, and the painful loss of it; about the memories of the past, and the trauma of growing up.

It begins with a paper boat, floating along one of those dirty streams that collect on the sides of streets during heavy rain. A young boy – Georgie – chases after it, always three steps too far behind. The boat gives Georgie the slip -- picking up speed just when he expects it to slow down, and gets sucked into the sewer, a subterranean labyrinth where among the rubbish and the sewage, there lives a murderous entity. Having been gone for 27 years, the entity has chosen this day to return, and young Georgie, who’s reaching into the sewers in a flailing attempt to find his boat, doesn’t realise he’s staring death in the face.

And what a face it is. There are tufts of bright orange hair standing at attention at odd spots on It’s head; a head that appears to be cracked and peeling, almost like a forgotten boiled egg. There are streaks of red running down either side of Its face like bloody gashes, uniting in a grotesque smile that splits open to reveal disgusting yellow buck-teeth. And It’s eyes… Oh, It’s eyes; bright, hypnotic, even when the rest of Its face is obscured in shadows.

It calls itself Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and with an ear-splitting growl, It pulls young Georgie into the sewer. “We all float down here,” It says, delivering the book’s – and now, film’s – classic line. “You’ll float too.”

Six months later, fate brings seven kids together. They call themselves the Losers, owing to their less-than-impressive reputation at school, and with the almost foolish bravery only idealistic kids in movies can have, they decide that only they can get to the bottom of the strange events that have been happening in their hometown – Derry – since Georgie’s murder. Other kids have disappeared, dozens of them – and a terrifying clown has been spotted. The two, they conclude, must be connected.

And so begins our tale.

King’s writing is propulsive. It always has been. There’s a blue-collar simplicity to it, which is perhaps what makes it so roguishly attractive. But the movie is different, despite being as devoted to the source material as a King fan at one of his live readings.

There’s a glossy, Spielbergian sheen to the visuals of Chung-hoon Chung – DP of choice for genius South Korean director, Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Stoker). Like its close cousins, JJ Abrams’ Super 8, Netflix’s Stranger Things , and any number of Steven Spielberg films – mind you, It is the real deal, having essentially created the genre that we now associate with an entire decade – this film is as much a coming-of-age story as it is a horror movie. Perhaps even more.

It’s at its best – ironically, for a scary movie – not when it is tormenting the kids with fresh evil every 15 minutes, but when it’s laying in the fields with them, gazing lazily at the endlessness of the summer holidays; when it’s splashing around in the river, wondering if the only girl in the group can notice them staring; and when it is irresponsibly riding on bikes, standing on the pedals to appear taller.

Despite how truly frightening Pennywise is – every time he appeared on screen, and it’s just the right amount of time, the audience at my screening grew visibly uncomfortable – It, the movie, lives and dies with the Losers; their carefully fleshed out stories, the bullying they endure, and the firm friendship that helps them survive. Unlike most horror films, It is a drama first. And boy, that’s refreshing.

Most remarkably, all this is the doing of Andy Muschietti, a director with only one feature credit to his name prior to this – the supernatural horror, Mama, in which Jessica Chastain played an edgelord – and that too, not a particularly good one.

With It, Muschietti has made one of the best horror movies of the year. It’s funny and warm and touching and frightening and profane and profound. It’s a terrific set-up to what is going to be a restlessly-anticipated Chapter 2.

It floats. You’ll float too.

Watch the It trailer here

Follow @htshowbiz for more The author tweets @RohanNaahar

Join Hindustan Times

Create free account and unlock exciting features like.

• Terms of use
• Privacy policy
• Weather Today
• HT Newsletters
• Subscription
• Print Ad Rates
• Code of Ethics

• Elections 2024
• India vs England
• T20 World Cup 2024 Schedule
• IPL 2024 Auctions
• T20 World Cup 2024
• Cricket Players
• ICC Rankings
• Cricket Schedule
• Other Cities
• Income Tax Calculator
• Budget 2024
• Petrol Prices
• Diesel Prices
• Silver Rate
• Relationships
• Art and Culture
• Telugu Cinema
• Tamil Cinema
• Exam Results
• Competitive Exams
• Board Exams
• BBA Colleges
• Engineering Colleges
• Medical Colleges
• BCA Colleges
• Medical Exams
• Engineering Exams
• Horoscope 2024
• Festive Calendar 2024
• Compatibility Calculator
• The Economist Articles
• Explainer Video
• On The Record
• Vikram Chandra Daily Wrap
• PBKS vs DC Live Score
• KKR vs SRH Live Score
• EPL 2023-24
• ISL 2023-24
• Asian Games 2023
• Public Health
• Economic Policy
• International Affairs
• Climate Change
• Gender Equality
• future tech
• Daily Sudoku
• Daily Crossword
• Daily Word Jumble
• HT Friday Finance
• Explore Hindustan Times
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use
• Subscription - Terms of Use

'Downtown Owl': '80s period piece doesn't know what it wants to be

Co-director lily rabe stars as small-town newcomer in disjointed adaptation of chuck klosterman novel..

Naomi (Vanessa Hudgens, left) invites newcomer Julia (Lily Rabe) out to the bar in “Downtown Owl.”

Stage 6 Films

Let’s talk about the high school football team in the disjointed and tonally uncertain Americana period piece “Downtown Owl,” an adaptation of the 2008 debut novel by the cool and acclaimed pop culture essayist and author Chuck Klosterman.

By my count, we see a maximum of eight players in a practice sequence, even fewer in a locker room scene. Granted, we’re not talking about “Friday Night Lights” or “Rudy” here — this isn’t a football movie — but even for a low-budget, indie-style film, it’s not that much of a financial strain to at least put enough extras in uniforms to reasonably approximate an actual team. The same goes for the high school classroom and hallway scenes here; it appears there are only a handful of students, only a couple of teachers.

All right, let’s say co-directors (and real-life partners) Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater are going for something approximating a filmed stage play, with dialogue ranging from gritty and grounded to self-consciously stylized. Still, whether it’s the depictions of high school life that are so unrealistic they take us out of the movie, or the inconsistent and frequently off-putting actions by Rabe’s Julia in the lead role, “Downtown Owl” never quite seems fully confident of its identity and purpose. It’s an occasionally interesting, well-acted mess.

The story kicks off with Julia arriving in the cloistered town of Owl, North Dakota, in 1983, where she has taken a temporary teaching job while her husband finishes his graduate thesis. Julia is immediately befriended by the boisterous and obnoxious Naomi (an overacting Vanessa Hudgens, affecting an accent that makes it sound like she watched “Fargo” one too many times), who has little trouble cajoling Julia into getting hammered nearly every night. (They’re usually the only women at the bar, which is populated by dull men with nicknames such as Dog Lover, Bull Calf, The Flaw Brothers and Brother Killer.)

Nearly every character in “Downtown Owl” is more of a type or a symbol. Old-timey townie Horace (the great Ed Harris) is the moral conscience of the town, who lives a life of overwhelming sadness while caring for his comatose wife. Bison rancher Vance (Henry Golding), a rather dim and uninteresting fellow, is still treated like a hero due to one unlikely play he made as a backup quarterback years ago. Sensitive football player Mitch (August Blanco Rosenstein), who doesn’t even like football, probably knows he’ll be going through a Vince state and then the Horace stage of his life in this nowhere town. We get it.

The filmmakers also fumble an absolutely cringe-y subplot about the football coach (Finn Wittrock) impregnating a student (Arden Michalec). Through all of this, Rabe plays it to the rafters, turning Julia into a mostly unlikable and at times pathetically misguided trainwreck who keeps making bad decisions. When Julia tries to offer guidance to a troubled student, the reply comes: “No offense, but if I needed to talk to an adult, why would I talk to you?”

• Sublime ‘How I Learned What I Learned’ delves into life lessons that shaped writer August Wilson

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Ordinary Angels review – heartwarming rescue from the horrors of the US healthcare system

Alan Ritchson is impressive as a father who can’t pay his desperately sick child’s hospital fees, but the good-neighbour plot ignores a bigger question

I f you’re familiar with Alan Ritchson from his turn as Jack Reacher in the Amazon series based on the phenomenally popular Lee Child thrillers, get ready to see a different side of him in this weepy based on a true story. He’s once more playing a large, taciturn man (whether, per Reacher, his hands are still “as big as dinner plates” is not addressed), but here his problems cannot be solved by hitting things. Grieving the recent death of his wife, and drowning in debt from hospital bills, he’s devastated by the news that his youngest daughter may have only weeks or months to live, due to a condition related to that which claimed the life of her mother. Her only hope is yet more expensive treatment.

The revelation that a loud hairdresser with a drinking problem and zero sense of personal boundaries (played, effectively, by Hilary Swank at her most Dolly Parton), has read about his case in the local newspaper and decided to make the unfortunate family her personal recovery project is not immediately welcomed by the gruff widower. There’s an interesting moral tension at work here: the self-appointed saviour is legitimately helpful, raising thousands of dollars, but she will not take no for an answer, and the unsolicited intrusion crosses the line at several points. And yet … her interventions, taken as a whole, do vastly more good than harm.

Of course, the real villain of the piece is the American healthcare system; this is not a story that could be set in Europe. That a system exists where it is even possible to owe more than $400,000 to a hospital is the stuff of dystopian nightmares, but this film isn’t in the business of confronting the politics around the family’s predicament. Directed by Jon Gunn and written by Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig, the heartwarming spectacle of a maverick force for good rallying an entire community to save one unfortunate family makes for better drama than questioning why that family is in need of saving in the first place. Taken on its own terms as an old-fashioned character drama and showcase for Ritchson as a dramatic actor (he’s genuinely really good), it does the job it set out to do.

• Drama films
• Healthcare industry

Most viewed

‘Civil War’: What you need to know about A24’s dystopian action movie

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

A24’s “Civil War,” the latest film from “Ex Machina” and “Men” director Alex Garland , imagines a third-term president ruling over a divided America and follows the journalists driving through the war-torn countryside on a mission to land his final interview. The movie is pulse-pounding and contemplative, as the characters tumble from one tense encounter to the next and ruminate on the nature of journalism and wartime photography.

In his review of the film, The Times’ Joshua Rothkopf wrote, “‘Civil War’ will remind you of the great combat films , the nauseating artillery ping of ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ the surreal up-is-down journey of ‘Apocalypse Now.’ It also bears a pronounced connection to the 2002 zombie road movie scripted by its writer-director Alex Garland, ‘28 Days Later.’”

Starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny as photojournalists, alongside Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson (and a scene-stealing, nerve-racking Jesse Plemons ), the film carries a reported production budget of $50 million and has already started to recoup the costs at the box office, earning $25.7 million in ticket sales in its first weekend in North America.

“Civil War” has also been a discourse juggernaut. Conversation on social media has focused on the lack of context given for the conflict at the heart of the film. In a recent column, The Times’ Mary McNamara wrote that “forcing the very real political divisions that plague this nation into vague subtext doesn’t even serve the purported pro-journalism nature of ‘Civil War.’”

Catch up on our coverage of the film below.

Review: ‘Civil War’ shows an America long past unraveling, which makes it necessary

Starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny as journalists chronicling a war at home, writer-director Alex Garland’s action film provokes a shudder of recognition.

April 11, 2024

Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny on the nightmarish ‘Civil War’: ‘No nation is immune’

Writer-director Alex Garland’s controversy-courting political fable about a violently divided America brings together two generation-defining actors.

April 4, 2024

What ‘Civil War’ gets right and wrong about photojournalism, according to a Pulitzer Prize winner

Carolyn Cole, a veteran L.A. Times photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of civil war in Liberia, breaks down the depiction of her profession in A24’s ‘Civil War.’

April 16, 2024

Inside the most unnerving scene in ‘Civil War’: ‘It was a stunning bit of good luck’

With a deeply disturbing turn by Jesse Plemons, one scene in “Civil War” encapsulates the film’s combustible political balancing act. It almost didn’t happen.

April 12, 2024

In trying to hedge its politics, ‘Civil War’ betrays its characters — and the audience

Alex Garland’s powerful war drama is ostensibly a tribute to the fourth estate. But the film is absent the examination of causes and consequences central to great journalism.

April 15, 2024

Company Town

After ‘Civil War’ and mainstream success, can indie darling A24 keep its cool?

‘Civil War’s’ overperformance at the box office proves that A24’s brand is strong enough to open a divisive $50-million about a dystopian America.

Entertainment & Arts

‘Civil War’ unites moviegoers at box office

Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War,’ about a strife-torn, near-future America, knocked ‘Godzilla x Kong’ from the top spot at the weekend box office.

April 14, 2024

More From the Los Angeles Times

Melissa Barrera is not afraid

April 23, 2024

Anne Hathaway recalls ‘gross’ chemistry tests from the early 2000s: ‘Now we know better’

‘Our Words Collide’ documents 5 L.A. teen poets testifying to spoken word’s transformative power

Sydney Sweeney claps back at critics (again), this time in new Hawaiian vacation pictures

April 22, 2024

‘Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver’ Review: An Even More Rote Story, but a Bigger and Better Battle

The second chapter of Zack Snyder's intergalactic epic is every bit as derivative as "Part One," but the climactic showdown sizzles. And guess what? It may not be over.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• ‘Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver’ Review: An Even More Rote Story, but a Bigger and Better Battle 5 days ago
• ‘Abigail’ Review: A Remake of ‘Dracula’s Daughter’ Turns Into a Brutally Monotonous Genre Mashup 6 days ago
• Why I Wasn’t Scared by ‘Civil War’ 1 week ago

Popular on Variety

But it’s all working up to the rebels-meet-the-fascists battle royale, and when Snyder is in his action element, as he is in the last 45 minutes of this movie, he can be as dazzling a genre stylist as James Cameron was in the ’80s. I can almost imagine a trailer for “Rebel Moon — Part Two” with the narrator intoning, “In a world where every movie blows up real good, Zack Snyder really blows this shit up good.” He’s a master of disaster, of putting the metal on screen, of dreaming a dream and watching it detonate. This time, though, even the fanboys may have to convince themselves they care.

At the end of “Part One,” Kora, leading the motley crew she’d gathered to fight the Motherworld, had won a duel to the death with Atticus Noble, the evil admiral who, as played by Ed Skrein in a fade topped by scary Roman Nazi bangs, is like Freddie Mercury as a Shakespearean sociopath. But even though she killed him, the Motherworld technology resurrected him. As “Part Two” opens, his body is still lying in a pool of gel, with wires sticking out (very “Frankenstein,” and also very “Dune”), but he’s utterly alive. He soon proves that he’s back to his old tricks by lifting up his Darth Vaderish black-metal-masked henchman as if Atticus himself were Darth Vader. (The henchman cautiously advocates that Atticus undergo more medical tests; for that advice, Atticus smashes his head in.)

With its force of evil revived, and newly messianic, “Part Two” settles into a plot that could hardly be more basic. Kora and her team return to Veldt, where they prepare the noble farm community for battle. Atticus and his military machine plan their own return visit so they can smash the rebellion, with extreme prejudice shown toward the mission of assassinating Kora. She’s the Scargiver because of the circular chest wound she gave to Atticus during their big duel.

The gigantic Motherworld ship arrives just as it did last time, hovering over Veldt in broad daylight, only now Kora is prepared. She, along with Gunnar, infiltrate it in a mini-ship of their own. Once inside, she plants strategic explosives and seeks out her nemesis, and the film cuts to the battle below, which oscillates between rock ‘n’ roll sci-fi gunfire and hand-to-hand savagery and the immensely gratifying ain’t-that-a-kick-in-the-head sight of war ships blowing up from inside, all set to one of those neo-Hans Zimmer scores of droning dread.

Reviewed at Digital Arts, New York, April 18, 2024. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 122 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of a The Stone Quarry, Grand Electric production. Producers: Deborah Snyder, Eric Newman, Zack Snyder, Wesley Coller. Executive producers: Bergen Swanson, Sarah Bowen, Shay Hatten, Kurt Johnstad.
• Crew: Director: Zack Snyder. Screenplay: Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, Shay Hatten. Camera: Zack Snyder. Editor: Dody Dom. Music: Tom Holkenborg.
• With: Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou, Ed Skrein, Michiel Huisman, Doona Bae, Anthony Hopkins, Staz Nair, Fra Fee. Cleopatra Coleman, Stuart Martin.

More From Our Brands

Marshmello, pinkpantheress to perform at 2024 mls all-star concert, charlie puth relists his rex lotery-designed home for $14 million, ftc noncompete ban looms over sports execs, coaches, nil, be tough on dirt but gentle on your body with the best soaps for sensitive skin, neuromancer: callum turner to lead apple’s series adaptation of sci-fi classic, verify it's you, please log in.

• Newsletters
• Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

Challengers Will Make You Sweat As Much As Its Stars

In luca guadagnino’s pulse-pounding new tennis movie, zendaya plays doubles with two exceptionally driven horndogs..

The tennis match that begins, ends, and provides the central narrative framework for Challengers , the vibrant new film from director Luca Guadagnino ( Call Me by Your Name , Bones and All , Suspiria ) at first strikes the viewer as implausibly high-stakes for a match at a shabby New Rochelle, New York, tournament called the Phil’s Tire Town Challenger. Two fiercely competitive male players, filmed in close-ups so tight that the beads of sweat flying off their faces seem to be the size of marbles, slam the ball back and forth as if vying for world-champion status, while a rapt crowd watches with the side-to-side head swivels that make audiences at tennis tournaments appear to be under hypnosis. (Over the course of the movie to come, Guadagnino will slyly play that swiveling motion for both suspense and laughs.) In the midst of the crowd sits a chic young woman who looks especially engaged with the volley in progress. She locks in on the motion of the ball in play as if its every thwack could decide her fate—which, as the rest of Challengers will show via a series of intricately nested flashbacks, is pretty much the case, thanks to decisions she and the men on the tennis court have made over 13 shared years of friendship, enemy-ship, and love.

The woman in the stands, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), is a former tennis prodigy forced into retirement by an injury during a college match. She now serves as both coach and manager to her husband, Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), a star player currently struggling to emerge from a midcareer slump. The other man on the court, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), is Art’s estranged best friend since childhood, a brilliant but undisciplined player who has spent the past decade on the fringes of the pro tennis world, getting by winning small tournaments against far less talented opponents. When we first meet them, Tashi and Art are a world-famous power couple, their photogenic faces gazing sleekly down from giant billboards promoting Art’s corporate sponsors. Meanwhile, Patrick is so down on his luck he has to sleep in his car in the tournament parking lot and sweet-talk the lady who signs him in to share half of her breakfast bagel.

But a long sequence set 13 years in the past makes clear that the power relations among these three have not always been so simple. When they first met Tashi, teenage tennis stars Patrick and Art watched in slack-jawed, horny awe as the then-unbeatable phenom destroyed an opponent on her way to winning a youth tournament. In Patrick’s words, Tashi is “the hottest woman alive,” as desirable for her prowess on the court as for her long limbs and frank come-hither stare. At a lavish party thrown by her sponsor to celebrate Tashi’s victory, the two young men—boys, at that point—vie for her attention and her phone number. After a teasing make-out session that seems to dangle the possibility of a future threesome, Tashi declares she will bestow the longed-for digits on whichever of them wins the next day’s match. The seed of jealousy this promise plants in Art and Patrick’s hitherto puppylike friendship will grow, over the next decade-plus, into the defining rivalry of all three of their lives, on the court and off.

Challengers ’ temporal structure is complex but, thanks to Marco Costa’s snappy editing, never hard to follow. Each successive flashback brings us one plot twist closer to understanding the stakes of the present-day match, the overlapping time frames shuffling together like cards in a deck. The screenplay—by the playwright Justin Kuritzkes, writing his first feature—establishes early on that the bond among all three protagonists passes first through tennis and only secondarily through physical intimacy. When Patrick becomes Tashi’s boyfriend during her college years, it’s clear that what binds them together is their shared killer instinct on the court. Later, after Tashi’s injury sidelines her from the sport she once seemed destined to dominate, she pours all her tennis know-how into molding the less instinct-driven but harder-working Art into a world-class player. The contrast between technical discipline and sheer animal drive, and the need to master both these forces before one can achieve greatness, becomes the movie’s most insistent theme.

The luscious cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (who also shot Call Me by Your Name ) plays up the central trio’s sensuality and athleticism. Though the sex scenes are not especially graphic, there is male nudity aplenty as Patrick, Art, and their fellow players wander in and out of sauna rooms, seldom bothering with towels. Tennis matches are filmed using inventive techniques, from POV ball-cam to a glass-bottom boat effect that has the viewer observing a game in progress from underneath, as if the floor of the court were transparent. Every once in a while, the movie’s devotion to framing its three charismatic stars in the most flattering possible light tips over into music-video territory, as when a close-up of Zendaya in a rainstorm lingers a fraction too long over her slo-mo windblown locks. But like Call Me by Your Name before it, Challengers is upfront in its desire to furnish the viewer with beautiful bodies and faces to look at. It doesn’t hurt that Zendaya, Faist (who broke out as Riff in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story ), and O’Connor (who played Prince Charles on The Crown ) are each a piece of eye candy of a different flavor: Zendaya sleek and imperturbable, Faist elegant and dancerlike, O’Connor a scruffy charmer whose devilish grin recalls a young Nicolas Cage. Thanks to ingenious costuming and styling, these three excellent actors, respectively 27 (Zendaya), 32 (Faist), and 33 (O’Connor), all carry off the trick of seeming to age from recent high school graduates to adults in their early 30s.

As to whether the circuit of desire at work among this threesome is straight, gay, or bisexual in nature, Guadagnino seems serenely uninterested in nailing down an answer. The men’s blood feud has as much to do with their mutual attraction as with the woman they’ve both spent their adult lives pursuing and trying to impress. Yet this isn’t the story of two closeted gay men arriving at their long-repressed sexual truth. Early in the film, during that first teenage make-out session, Tashi engineers a kiss between the two boys, sitting back with a Cheshire-cat smile as she sets them down an erotic path they’ve never fully explored. In a different movie, they might discover each other and forget about her. But the three-way relationship Challengers wants to explore is more circuitous, and kinkier, than that. In order for their athletic and romantic lives to function, Patrick, Art, and Tashi feel a less-than-healthy need to channel their lust for each other into their drive to win at tennis—and at times, with disastrous consequences, vice versa. “I’d let her fuck me with a tennis racket,” mutters horndog Patrick when he sees Tashi on the court for the first time. In some ways, he doesn’t know just how prophetic that image will turn out to be, not just for himself but for all three of them.

Guadagnino’s weaving of eroticism into the everyday physicality of high-level athletic training brings to mind earlier cinematic depictions of the way romance and sports can combine, films like Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2000 directorial debut Love and Basketball , Ron Shelton’s 1988 love-triangle baseball classic Bull Durham , or the 1982 Robert Towne drama Personal Best , a lesbian love story set in the world of track and field. Challengers may not be this director’s most psychologically insightful movie—the characters can at times feel like chess-piece contrivances rather than fully rounded individuals—but it’s almost certainly his most entertaining and fastest-paced. The thumping EDM score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross lends not only the tennis scenes but several moments of off-court intimacy an atmosphere of pulse-pounding immediacy. And even if, like me, you’re not a sports person, either at the movies or in real life, the stakes of the Phil’s Tire Town Challenger have been so firmly established by the movie’s final scene that, like Zendaya’s Tashi, you’ll find your head swiveling from side to side as if your life’s trajectory hangs on the next bounce of that neon-green ball.