What a goddamned dumb movie this was.
Firstly, let me state that the kids in the movie were great. Their relationships felt real, the humour was straight out of stranger things (with the one actor, too), and in general, they worked REALLY well for me. I enjoyed the banter and detective work and all that jazz, and it was generally good.
Likewise with the creepy as fuck parents. Bev's dad was disgusting and genuinely disturbing, and the one over-protected kid's mom definitely knew WTF was happening in town.
I wish they had dove a bit deeper into the history of pennywise, and how obviously some people know what is going on their town. The adults are somewhat in on it, and they were the creepiest part of the movie for me... everything else.. not so much.
Every "scare" in the film was a jump scare, that was conveniently preceded by about 20-30 seconds of spooky music to telegraph that it was coming. Every lick of horror in this movie was predictable and it became laughable. It killed any tension that was being built otherwise.
How 'bout the rules the film set up for itself? Are we gonna adhere to them? of course not.
Georgie gets killed off immediately, okay, cool. He's scared of pennywise and he feeds on fear, one and done he's dead. But what about the rest of the kids? They're all just as, if not more so scared of pennywise at many points during the film, yet instead of going for the kill, pennywise just delays and delays until one of the other kids can conveniently interrupt just before he goes for the strike. This happened every. single. time.
Okay, so lets now talk about the bully kid. He was a shithead who deserved to die immediately, but pennywise enlists him to do what exactly? He sat outside in his car and waited for all the kids to go into the house, okay.. so, all but one make it into the well and to relative safety before the final boss, and then bully-kid comes in and hits one kid over the head before being easily disposed of. The character didn't even need to exist in the film he was so anticlimactic.
Every time the kids said they needed to stick together to defeat pennywise, one would immediately wander off to investigate a fucking sound. This happened what, four times? WE MUST STICK TOGETHER.. hey where's billy? BILLY'S FUCKING DEAD, KIDS.
Lets talk about that final boss battle and ending.. he's got a clown murder cave in the sewer system with a bunch of floating kids. The kids overcome their fears and banish pennywise down the proverbial toilet. One kid comments that the people are floating down and it's never touched upon again.
One month later all the kids are making a blood pact.. no talk if those people survived, or if they were dead, or disfigured or anything. No investigation by police into wtf went on or how it all went down, everything, including the historical research and deeper lore of the film just get thrown out of the window so one kid can get a chub before the love interest fleas to portland.. cool.
Now, don't get me wrong.. if I were a kid in that situation, I'd be scared shitless and the ability to overcome those fears would be a mammoth task.. but as a filmgoer and observer of this story, nothing about it scared me, made me feel any suspense or anxiety for the situations that unfolded. Telegraphed jump scare after jump scare, I was just sitting there bored of watching the drooling clown pull a bond-villain level cat and mouse game with all the kids, when all I could think of is how quickly poor Georgie bit the dust.
ALSO: What was with the blood that the adults couldn't see? Okay, cool, it's a psychological effect on the kids.. so if we've established that the blood isn't real (by way of the dad being like wtf bev you're on crack and don't forget I'm a child abuser), why the hell would they spend the afternoon cleaning something that wasn't there?
ALSO PT 2: So, truffle-shuffle kid gets a letter carved into his stomach, AND slashed across his belly, and no one bats an eye other than "he's leaking hamburger helper!" ?? -- Would his parents not be like WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO YOU? WHO ARE YOU HANGING OUT WITH WHAT THE FUCK.
ALSO PT 3: So pennywise could become larger than life when coming out of the projector.. why didn't he just make himself bigger during the final fight? they wouldn't have been able to jump him at all.
Or the jewish kid who had his face chewed off? His parents didn't give a shit either.
Clearly the injuries were real because they got bandaged up, but WHAt?
So many holes in the movie that ruined the build for me.. there were good bits for sure, but god was it stupid. It doesn't deserve all the praise it's getting at all.