IT movie review round-up: Stephen King's film is a 'terrifying piece of classic horror'

Directed by Andrés Muschietti, Stephen King's IT movie is set to hit the theatres this week. According to critics, the movie is a treat for all the horror movie lovers.

Also read:  Is this why clowns are pissed at Stephen King?

The horror flick follows the town of Derry, Maine, where children begin to disappear all of a sudden. In the meantime, a group of kids faces their biggest fear when they square off against an evil clown named Pennywise.

Here's what the critics are saying about the movie.

Variety

Focusing entirely on the childhood-set portions of King's book, it's a collection of alternately terrifying, hallucinatory, and ludicrous nightmare imagery; a sometimes jarring pile up of moods, ranging from haunted house horror to nostalgic hang out humor; a popcorn movie about gruesome child murders; a series of well-crafted yet decreasingly effective suspense set pieces; and a series of well-acted coming-of-age sequences that don't quite fully mature. "It" looks poised to make a killing at the box office, but there's a fundamental hollowness that haunts the film just as surely as the titular monster haunts this small town.

The Guardian

This is an ensemble smorgasbord of scariness, or maybe a portmanteau of petrification, throwing everything but the haunted kitchen-sink at the audience in the cause of freaking us out. As creepy and horrible things keep happening to each of the kids, it almost feels like a horror anthology, a collection of scares which could be shuffled and presented in any order. In some ways, it is more suited to a TV series – such as Twin Peaks, maybe – and has in fact been adapted that way.

Metro

It isn't just a horror film though, as the comedy is just as strong and is used cleverly in those moments that have you screaming into your hands. In fact, depending on your stance on horror films, It could be a disappointment as the tension is nearly always dissipated by a one liner or a joke by the Losers.

The Hollywood Reporter

The film gets right into those hauntings, with a series of sequences in which, targeted when each is alone, the kids seemingly hallucinate horrible things. Though effective individually, the scenes don't build upon each other to fill us with dread. And they would benefit from a few more practical effects mixed in with the CG, especially if Muschietti wants to milk some retro pleasures from his setting.

The Telegraph

Every one of them is just an alter ego for the shape-shifting Pennywise, an insatiable, inter-dimensional predator whose practically motiveless evil remains every bit as unnerving as it was when Curry played him. This time, the role falls to Bill Skarsgård – son of Stellan, brother of True Blood's Alexander – speaking with a rogue Swedish accent that only adds to the skillful grotesquerie of his performance.