IT is a reboot of the 1990 Stephen King film IT.  The movie is a psychological thriller that preys on the common nightmares most children have in their early childhood. IT uses unconventional jump scares.  Usually every horror movie has one character that jumps in front of the camera in order to scare the viewer.  In IT while there are regular jump scares the movie uses a more psychological method of fright.  The movie uses a method of fear that leaves the viewer questioning if the scare was real or part of the children’s imagination.  This makes the movie IT especially scary.

However, some of these “jump scares” are pretty hilarious. One of the scariest things in this movie is you don’t know if the monster is real or a figment of a child’s imagination. While this is scary, the tone of the movie adds some hilarity to the film.  

The movie starts with the main character, Bill, loses his brother Georgie to Pennywise in a sewer.  This then leads to other disappearances until the kids in the town band together to try and get rid of the clown. During this process, each kid is met with the creature they fear the most until they must make a decision on whether to live their lives in fear or confront their fears. However, as each kid is met with what he fears the most the use of CGI really takes away from the frightening moments.

Like all good movies, there is a climax where the kids face Pennywise the dancing clown.  They learn during this fight that united they are strong but alone they are weak. While horror movies have less of a lesson than other movies, this movie has a strong message.

IT was a huge success at the box office but after seeing the movie fans weren’t too pleased.  

Lorenzo Posmentier, a freshman at the iSchool, said, “The movie should not be considered a horror movie.  It was funny and the ‘jump scares’ were bad because the clown looked dumb.”  

Keira Daignault, a freshman said, “Overall it was a funny movie and the kids in it made it funny.”

Olivia Toussaint, a sophomore said, “It was really funny, and I didn’t expect it to be that way especially since I don’t like to watch scary movies.” 

While IT was a huge box office success bringing in over 656 million dollars apparently most of the fan base thought the movie should have been classified as a comedy.  I personally thought that it was funny but some elements in the film were scary.  

Elements such as the abandoned house and the sewers are scary but most of the film was riddled with jokes that took a horror film and placed it into the comedy genre. Overall I think that the movie was good. Instead of being a horror movie, it was a funny movie with elements of horror.