8 / 10
Official trailer
It’s Andrés Muschietti’s 2017 American supernatural horror film adapting the first half of Stephen King’s 1986 novel, depicting a group of children in 1989 Derry, Maine, who confront a shape-shifting evil that emerges from the town’s sewer system every twenty-seven years and primarily appears as the dancing clown Pennywise.
Bill Skarsgård plays Pennywise. Jaeden Lieberher plays Bill Denbrough. Jeremy Ray Taylor plays Ben Hanscom. Sophia Lillis plays Beverly Marsh. Finn Wolfhard plays Richie Tozier. Chosen Jacobs plays Mike Hanlon. Jack Dylan Grazer plays Eddie Kaspbrak.
Wyatt Oleff plays Stanley Uris. Chase Palmer, Cary Joji Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman wrote the screenplay. New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. produced and released the film in September 2017 to major commercial success.
It’s the most commercially successful R-rated horror film ever released and a considerable King adaptation that handles the source novel’s child-focused first half with real craftsmanship. The decision to separate the novel’s split child-adult timeline into two films, with It Chapter Two in 2019 covering the adult timeline, gave Muschietti’s first film space to develop the Losers’ Club ensemble with significant individual character work. Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise replaced the 1990 Tim Curry television-miniseries version with a different interpretation, with both Pennywises now operating as legitimate alternatives to King’s underlying character.
Muschietti’s It frightens me and makes me care about seven kids, and the second part is harder to pull off than the first. Skarsgård’s clown is properly unsettling, but what stays with me are the Losers on their bikes giving each other grief. My one reservation is that King’s adult half is held back for another film, so this one ends feeling like part one, because it is.
Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise
Bill Skarsgård replaced Tim Curry’s 1990 television-miniseries Pennywise with a noticeably different interpretation. Where Curry played the clown as approachable trickster who turned predatory in particular moments, Skarsgård plays Pennywise as alien from the first appearance, with his speech patterns, physical movements, and facial expressions registering as wrong throughout the running time.
Skarsgård’s eye-disalignment, where he can deliberately misalign his eye-direction during scenes, gives Pennywise specific uncanny-valley quality that the surrounding makeup and costume design add to. The performance carries considerable weight across the film, with Pennywise’s appearances spaced throughout the running time instead of concentrated. The cumulative effect is a standout horror-villain performance of the late 2010s.
That wandering eye disturbs me. Curry’s clown was fun to watch. Skarsgård’s is the one I’d never want to meet, and for a horror villain that’s the better deal.
For Writers
Replacement performances of established horror characters work best when the new actor commits to a different interpretation instead of attempting to imitate the original. Skarsgård’s Pennywise succeeds because it doesn’t attempt to be Curry’s Pennywise.
The Losers’ Club Ensemble
Muschietti’s film treats the Losers’ Club child ensemble with major individual character work that the divided-novel structure makes possible. Each child has a distinct home-life problem that the film develops alongside the central Pennywise material: Bill’s grief over his murdered brother Georgie, Beverly’s father’s abuse, Eddie’s hypochondriac mother, Richie’s nervous-energy joking, Ben’s outsider isolation, Mike’s family loss, Stanley’s anxiety.
The cumulative effect produces ensemble character work that horror productions rarely sustain across full feature running times. The children’s friendship and their gradual mutual support against both Pennywise and their respective home difficulties are the film’s emotional core. The horror sequences hit hard because the audience has invested in the children as individuals instead of as horror-victim ensemble.
This is why I rate the film as high as I do. I believe these kids are friends, and Richie’s endless mouth and Eddie’s panic make me laugh in a film that’s otherwise working hard to frighten me. The horror bites because I don’t want to lose any of them.
For Writers
Horror ensemble productions benefit from real individual character work that gives the supernatural threat its particular stakes. The Losers’ Club’s individual home-difficulties make their collective confrontation with Pennywise emotionally meaningful.
The Period Setting
Muschietti’s film shifts the novel’s child timeline from 1958 to 1989, partly for production convenience and partly to match the 1980s nostalgia trend that Stranger Things had successfully commercialized in 2016. The 1989 setting allows for particular cultural references that later It Chapter Two could use as foundation for 2016-set adult timeline material.
The period production design draws on Stranger Things’s certain 1980s aesthetic without directly imitating it. The bicycles, the costume choices, the home interiors, the absence of contemporary technology, all establish a particular period feel that later horror productions have considerably imitated. The period setting gives the children’s-ensemble material the distinct nostalgic warmth that contemporary settings wouldn’t have supplied. I love the 1989 setting. The bikes, the bedrooms and the absence of phones give the kids room to be kids, and that warmth makes the sewer scenes feel colder by contrast.
For Writers
Period horror productions benefit from distinct cultural reference points that contemporary settings can’t provide. It’s 1989 setting gives the Losers’ Club material particular nostalgic warmth that 2017-set production couldn’t have achieved.
Craft Note
Andrés Muschietti had previously directed Mama (2013) before It. The production cost approximately thirty-five million dollars and grossed over seven hundred million worldwide, an extraordinary return that built It as the most commercially successful R-rated horror film ever released. The Benjamin Wallfisch score contributes considerably to the film’s tonal balance. The 2019 It Chapter Two continued the adult timeline with the original ensemble adult-actor casting. A 2027 prequel television series Welcome to Derry has been announced for HBO Max release.
Is It (2017) worth watching?
It’s an 8, and I’d put it near the top of the Stephen King adaptations.
Skarsgård’s Pennywise, the Losers’ Club, the 1989 setting and Muschietti’s direction add up to a horror film that deserved its commercial and critical reception. It stops short of a 9 for me because it’s half a story, and the ending plays like an intermission. Strongly recommended.
