It

Horror is a genre that has got very limited space for improvisation or I should say that the genre has got improvised very rarely. Coming to It, the latest Hollywood horror film based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name is somewhat a run-of-the-mill horror film that does have scary sequences to its credit to keep us occupied for the 135 minutes of its runtime. The predictability factor is there, but at the end everyone is grading the movie on how scary it is and on that scales this film is definitely worthy of being called a good horror film.

In 1988 a young boy Georgie goes missing while he was playing with a paper boat made by his brother Bill. A year after the incident Bill is still in trauma of his missing brother whom his family assumes to be dead. During summer when certain suspicious scary things happen around him and his friends, Bill decides to go in search of his brother and It is talking about this particular journey of the gang to solve the mystery.

Well the horror is on the typical side in terms of visualization. But director Andres Muschietti has a slightly different version of the usual take. Unlike the usual pattern of showing glimpses of the ghost, he is showing us the face of the ghost for a fair amount of time. That tactic at times gives freshness and there are areas where that method gives space for unintentional comedy.  The story doesn’t have this secluded background and that is one reason It looks a little different from the usual horror films. The scares and thrills are the usual ones but still effective.

I haven’t read the book and looking at the movie it seems like the book has a lot of areas that tries to tighten the friendship between the kids in the story. Muscheitti tries to achieve that through scenes that aren’t blended well with the narrative. There is a sequence in the midway were our gang is pelting stones at a rival gang and the scene wasn’t at all working in the way it was intended to be. The visualization looks impressive. The visual choreography of the major scares in the script and some of the completely surprising entries of the clown give the movie the sort of commercial high one would expect. The cinematography was really good and the cuts were pretty precise. The visual effects and the production design also showed quality.

Bill Skarsgard as the titular character deserves to be appreciated for adding that spookiness to the portrayal. Jaeden Lieberher as Bill was also pretty effective. Sophia Lillis as Beverly manages to pull off the character neatly. Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie was another performer whose performance looked natural. The casting in general was on the positive side.

It has things that are different from the kind of tricks and tactics one see in horror movies, especially at a time when the conjuring franchise has created a new standard. But the “different” things they have attempted or added in the film at times pull it away from the track and occasionally give it freshness.

Rating: 3/5