I went to see It at the movies in hopes that they have finally did a Stephen King book right. And I'm happy to say that I feel they did a pretty decent job this time.
First let me explain my approach to a movie review. I love movies and I love the technical bits on writing a movie but I'm going to try to not get into the technical bits too much. What I want to get into is the entertainment value of the films.
Okay, that's out of the way. I'm gonna try not to give anything away.
The movie to me was done well on different levels. I had read the book for the first time about a year ago. Well I listened to it on audio, all 44 hours of it. As with all of Kings work that I have read, I feel he tends to get a little heavy on the back story. But in this case I think the amount of stuff King wrote for the book helped the movie. The movie had just the right amount of character development for the 7 kids and even for the secondary antagonist.
The cast was well chosen. The kids did an excellent job portraying the characters of the book. Yes some of them didn't align to the way I envisioned them but most of them did. On top of that the locations were picked very well. The town of Derry felt just like the book, the sewers, the bridge. Heck, it all felt just right.
The story? I think they did just the right amount of sticking to the original and added in just the right amount of new scenes and it all fell into place nicely. Yes there was some stuff visualized differently then the book but the spirit was there. The new scenes did a good job of reinforcing the relationship of the kids so I'm happy with them.
One of the biggest problems I have with the book is the way it was chronologically written. Well I think the movie solves that very well. I can't say too much about it because it will give stuff away, but I think they made the right choice. Although it did leave me wondering when certain things were going to happen while I was watching it.
Was it scary? I think so. To be honest I am not a big fan of horror films so I am not one to ask if it was scary. But I did notice some people jump at times. There were your shock scares and there were some creepy moments but over all I think it was more of an American style horror film. Not a lot of blood and guts either. Don't get me wrong though if someones arm get torn off they show it but it wasn't over done.
Structurally (here we go) I think the separation between the first and second act wasn't very strong but it felt very faithful to the book. The second act did start to tire some in the middle but not to the point of boredom. I was still wondering how things were going to unfold. Third act was done well.
That's it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the movie and how it stacks up to the book.
Until the next movie.