Growing up with icons like Bozo, Doink, and Homey, This Guy was never that scared of clowns. It’s just a dude with a red nose trying to make a living, right? Now, if you grew up with those legends, you also likely have a few not so fond memories of Tim Curry’s Pennywise from the original miniseries attempt at King’s IT. Now, if Curry’s dancing clown with bad teeth affected you at all, you’re in for a hell of a treat with this new take on the classic tale of losers, killers, nightmares, and turtles, turtles… turtles all the way d– this is going off track. Beep beep, Richie.

Andy Muschietti helms this new adaptation with vicious precision and deadly wit, not unlike Pennywise himself. Every frame and sound is designed to evoke a horrid response, and as usual, the subtleties are where the real story is told. Now, I said once, This Guy’s not afraid of any clown. But a shapeshifting, arm biting, sewer dwelling, fear machine; well, that’s not exactly a “clown” now is it?

For the uninitiated, IT follows a group of outcast children in the sleepy, creepy town of Derry, Maine. We open with a young child getting lured into a storm drain by a demonic clown, before having his arm bitten off, bleeding in the street, and being dragged underground to be devoured. It gets better.

Our heroes are assaulted and terrorized one by one by the same killer clown (possibly from outer space, unconfirmed) in various horrific forms. They soon realize they’ll have to band together and stop its reign of murder and balloon racketeering before It hibernates again, and the whole thing starts over. It’s equal parts Monster Squad and The Shining, with a few extra dick jokes tossed in for good measure. I’m not even kidding; literally every joke lands.

“You’ll float too.”

Muschietti’s adaptation of IT modernizes the story somewhat. The film, set to be the first of two, finds our child heroes in 1989, a full thirty years up from the setting of the novel. This will place the sequel somewhere around 2016 when The Losers return. This is an obvious and smart choice, allowing for more relatable and recognizable references and name drops, which were almost excessive in King’s novel. A man of our times, This Guy much prefers seeing Lethal Weapon 2 on the marquee than I Was A Teenage Werewolf. Call me biased. This means we also trade greasers for mullet wearing assholes in muscle shirts, so it’s give and take.

The kids themselves, among them Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) as Richie Tozier, and Sophia Lillis as Bev Marsh, absolutely kill it. And this is coming from a guy who hates kids in movies. But the Losers Club just connect so easily with the audience. They look real, they talk real; at times the dialogue almost seems ripped from a Shane Black script. And when they’re not being hilariously crass, they turn it on for the dark and twisted effortlessly. The horrors of awful home lives, and the deadly terror below the streets mesh into a truly frightful and disturbing adventure. But it still remains an adventure.

“This not real enough for you, Billy? I’m not real enough for you? It was real enough for Georgie.”

Of course front and center, even when you don’t see him, is Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise. Side note: Of all the possible Hollywood dynasties, This Guy never expected Stellan fucking Skarsgard to end up the patriarch of THREE successful kids. Anyway, while memories of Curry might still creep you out in public showers, Skarsgard takes Pennywise to another level. Every gesture, expression, and silly step is just wrought with unease and tension. He takes a character that is supposed to be otherworldly and unknowable (Lovecraft on cocaine), and actually makes it so. I wasn’t impressed with shit like Hemlock Grove, but the kid has won me over to the point I never want to see him again. And that’s a compliment.

“And now… I’m gonna have to kill this fucking clown!”

What IT succeeds at is melding the novels scares, laughs, whimsy, and disturbing imagery, AND wrapping it all in a moving coming-of-age tale. Yes, the clown kills and devours children, but adolescence devours these kids’ innocence and sense of wonder, replacing it with cynicism and cosmic dread. And that is what makes them such easy prey for IT‘s deadly appetites.

So, if you can only see one Stephen King adaptation this year, make it… IT. And then try and forget that you had a choice to begin with. Those who choose wrong have forgotten the face of their father.

This Guy Scores IT: 8/10