Add "sh" to the front of "It" and you'll have my one word review

I read the book years ago. I liked it.

I watched the TV movie. Tim Curry was great. The rest I don't recall as it was pretty muddled and unremarkable so I never re-visited it on VHS.

I was hoping that this new version would at least be good. Since they weren't trying to adapt the entire book (a wise decision in my opinion) I thought they'd have the time to develop the characters and tell a less complicated, leaner story.

I was hoping it would at least be good, even passable.

Hell, even fun scary and not actually scary would have been fine.

Not. Even. Close.

By the first half hour I was having to stifle laughter over the astonishing mess that was being excreted onto the screen.

I have never so many cliches in one movie before. Such horrendous pacing and editing. Such cringeworthy dialogue. Such paper-thin characterizations. Such horribly timed one-liners and "jokes." The whole movie was a joke.

The only scary thing about "It" was how bad it was. How horribly uninspiring and predictable everything was.

All the child actors did the best that they could, but even their generally earnest portrayals were not able to save this massive manure pile.

I really feel bad for Andy Muschietti. Having to come in and try and make something coherent out of the four years of pre-production that Fukanaga abandoned cannot have been any easy task.

And yet, I could not find a single interesting interpretation or creative decision that felt to me like the people behind the scenes had any other goal other than push this thing into theaters before any kind of aesthetic could be applied to make it hang together. Just get it out and hope that the hype is enough to recoup their costs before the word of mouth hits and the theaters are empty. I went last night and there maybe a dozen people. It was quiet, too. Not the scared quiet. More like the WTF kind of quiet.

"It" was just a succession of scenes. Almost none of them lead into another thematically, and few if any commented on the previous scene or did anything to develop what had come before.

It's like they hired someone who had not only never directed a horror movie before, but had never directed at all.

Best case scenario for Muschetti is that this turns out to be his "Alien 3", and that later he can show us that he does have a unique and interesting vision when the project is his from the start.

What a waste. Literally.

The only thing floating down here is a giant, gas-filled turd.

Submitted September 22, 2017 at 10:45AM by xenobuzz http://ift.tt/2wH06G3