It

Stephen King’s nearly 1200-pager from 1986 might be the author’s best work, and his most terrifying. Despite being fairly iconic for its nightmarish clown antagonist (likely due to Tim Curry’s performance in the 1990 TV movie, an adaptation which frankly holds up poorly upon revisitation), It is by no means simple monster fare. Rather, the evil of the novel is an all-enveloping, inescapable presence that takes many forms, something from which the characters can’t simply run away. Nor can the reader, for King’s prose creates a suffocating atmosphere of fear that even putting the book down for a while hardly alleviates.

The long-gestating big-screen adaptation takes the same approach. But instead of an ever-constricting air of pure terror, director Andy Muschietti opts for a more playful kind of scary. The picture is like a big funhouse (for the older kiddies, mind you), full of creative and colorful frights, with the sinister clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) half-comically playing host to the proceedings like the Cryptkeeper. It's the Poltergeist-like haunted house horror that takes the audience on a fun, shock-filled ride that satisfies their scare fix, but lets them go to bed at ease that very night.

The setting is King’s oft-used fictional town of Derry, Maine. Once every quarter-plus-century, this locale is besieged by a mysterious entity that snatches up kids. Little explanation is given besides the fact that it manifests as people’s worst fears, almost always accompanied by Pennywise. Taking place during the latest coming of “It” in the late 80s, the film follows a group of pubescent outcasts dubbed “The Losers’ Club” (Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, and Chosen Jacobs) who are haunted by the evil being.

The screenplay pares down half of the book (the other half, following the Losers as adults, is in production) into a two-and-a-quarter hour movie. So, many things are simplified, and whole backstories and memorable sequences are left out. Yet, it still feels complete, like all the important stuff is there. Also, in some ways, condensing the material works in the movie’s favor, necessitating a subtlety that strengthens a couple elements. In particular, the arc of Lillis’ character is improved, her personal horror now more implied and much more disturbing. And surprisingly, it’s the moments between the horrors where the writing seems strongest. The relationships between the protagonists feel real, funny and even a little sweet. These scenes are bolstered by the young cast, who is uniformly excellent, and gel remarkably well with the scarier parts of the picture.

There admittedly comes a point where the scares start to diminish, and the picture falls victim to that old adage about how the more they show the monster, the less scary it gets. One can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers have anything left to frighten with for Part 2. But for now, this first part is a great time. It doesn’t exactly stick in the viewer’s mind for days after like something truly haunting and terrifying, but damn if they won’t enjoy themselves while watching it, between their fingers, perhaps.