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IT
Director: Andy Muschietti
Writer: Gary Dauberman, et al.
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
IT stays true to the spirit of the original Stephen King novel. I’ve loved King since I was seventeen years old. IT was one of at least ten King novels I read during my senior year of high school. When I say that IT stays true to the source material, that’s the highest praise I can give.
 Not all of the scenes from the book occur in the same way. The scares are different, the monsters are different, and the time period is different. But the feeling of camaraderie in the Loser’s Club, the us against the world vibe, the strength they draw from one another, those things are all there. The adaption doesn’t suffer from any of the changes. The new monsters/scares keep those of us who’ve read the books and watched the 1990 miniseries on our toes.Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Wyatt Oleff were all outstanding in their respective roles as the members of the Loser’s Club. Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise looms over everything in the movie, but the rest of the cast was good enough to keep him from stealing the show.
The standouts from the Loser’s Club ranks, in my opinion, were Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh, and
 Jaeden Lieberher as Bill Denborough. Bev Marsh is the glue that keeps the Loser’s Club together. She and Bill are the toughest members of the group. They have the worst home lives. Bev’s father is sexually abusive and Bill’s parents ignore him after the death of his younger brother Georgie. Every scene with Bev and her father is intensely creepy because her father’s language and her mannerisms suggest the abuse, which isn’t explicitly addressed until later in the movie. She is the only member of the Loser’s Club who isn’t scared of Pennywise after her first encounter with him. She’s seen worse.Bill’s mother is shown once during the opening scenes, and his father is seen once a little later. It’s clear that his father is grief stricken, but he lets it get the better of him, shouting at Bill after he tries to demonstrate with a model, where Georgie’s body should have washed out of the sewers. Bill is haunted by his brother’s death, even though he won’t admit out loud that his brother is in fact dead. His friends know to refer to Georgie as “missing”, not dead. Like everyone who suffers a tragedy like that, he needs to know why. That desire to know why drives Bill, until he learns that Pennywise is real, at that point his drive comes from his desire to stop the creature that killed his brother.
Of course Bill Skarsgard was excellent as Pennywise. The movie wouldn’t have succeeded in
 capturing the spirit of it’s source material so well if he hadn’t been. He’s menacing, creepy, and disturbingly childlike. At times he comes off like a child who is all-powerful, upset that the other kids don’t want to play with him, and oblivious that his form of play is torture and death. That’s just the vibe he sometimes gives though, Pennywise is very aware of what he has in store for the kids. He tells them as much eventually. The story isn’t all about Pennywise though. The story is about how the Loser’s Club deals with ITs actions, existence, and corruption of Derry, Maine. It’s also about how they meet the challenges of growing up, coping with bullies, various parental failures, and how they’re friendship with one another helps them overcome said challenges.
Fighting IT isn’t personal for the other Losers, like it is for Bill. They do it because they want to survive, and because when you’re twelve you do what your friends do. Up to a point. After a close call with Pennywise the group splinters and it takes the disappearance of Bev to pull them back together. By that point all of them know that they can hurt IT if they stick together. A close call with an evil child eating entity will test the bounds of any friendship though. When it matters, they come together.
 If we stick together,we’ll wib And when they come together, nothing can stop them. That’s the message of IT. It’s something that Losers will have to rediscover when they come back to Derry, all grown up, in Chapter Two. I read a fun tidbit in another review that I’d like to share and expand on. The cast members were asked whom they’d like to play their characters as adults. These are their answers; Christian Bale as Bill, Chris Pratt as Ben, Bill Hader as Richie, Jessica Chastain as Bev, Chadwick Boseman as Mike, Joseph Gordon Levitt as Stan, and Jake Gyllenhaal as Eddie. I’m with the kids on Chastain, Pratt, Boseman, and Gordon-Levitt. My picks for the rest of the cast would be; Elden Hensen as Eddie, Seth Green as Richie, and Mark Ruffalo as Bill.
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