A killer “clown” comes back to terrify the people, especially the children, of Derry, Maine every 27 years. The 2017 remake of the Stephen King Novel IT will have children and adults traumatized alike. “The clown was pretty scary when he opened his mouth to kill people,” said Senior Jacob Macaluso.

Stephen King released the book IT in 1996. The first movie rendering of the movie was released in 1990, and, keeping with the 27-year pattern, the remake was released in 2017. The movie follows around a group of kids that call themselves the losers club. The club is the only group of people that seem to care about the disappearing children as the everyone else in the town, especially the parents, seem to ignore it. The losers must band together to conquer all of their biggest fears to try to overcome Pennywise the clown.

As a new take on a book written in 1986, people were questioning if Andres Muschietti would be able to live up to the incredible hype of the movie. This movie has the most watched trailer in history by the way. The movie more than lived up to the hype with a terrifying demonic performance by Bill Skarsgard and the witty humor of Richie Tozier played by Finn Wolfhard. This movie had audiences laughing in one scene and terrified in the next.

The seven members of the loser’s club, Ben, Bill Bev, Richie, Eddie, Mike, and Stan, along with Pennywise are the characters that keep the movie moving forward. Ben Denbrough, the leader of loser’s club, is a member because of his speech impediment. He is the one that lost a family member to the clown, and he is the one leading club into the fight. Pennywise the clown is known as it because he does not really have one form. He is the “dead lights”, and his favorite form in the clown.

The Bowers’ gang, led by Henry Bowers, and the parents of the children play essential roles in the film. The gang in constantly terrorizing the loser’s club, as if trying to stop a demonic clown is not hard enough. The parents in Derry also act like nothing is going on, and they try to stop the children when they try to do anything about it. It is as if the Bowers’ gang and the parents want to stop the only group of people trying to save the town from a serial killer.

Many of the technical elements of the movie related are to the characters’ costumes. Obviously the old, dirty, creepy clown costume worn by Pennywise is the most explicit one, but there are many more. Many of the shirts worn by members of the loser’s gang are throwback’s to 80s pop culture, stores, and Stephen King’s hometown of Portland, Maine. My favorite technical element was use of the original Pennywise mask in Richie’s nightmare scene.

The second rendering of It chapter one combined the creepiest and some of the weirdest of Stephen’s King decrepit imagination. There are many similarities between the 1990 rendering of It and the 2017 one, and I do not expect that change in chapter two. It seems the fact that people, including Erik Holiday who as seen both movies plenty of times, knowing what is going to happen does not phase them, and it keeps them floating for more.

If you want to learn more about this movie, I would recommend these YouTube videos. I would recommend Easter Eggs You Missed In It by Looper, The Ending Of It Explained by Looper, and It (2017)- Before They Were Famous by Michael McCrudden