Scares but where did the storyline go?

screen without comment or insight.

It contains a number of effective set-pieces and scares (although not nearly as many as last month’s Annabelle: Creation managed in a shorter running time), but it really doesn’t hang together as a narrative.

The gang meet up, get into a scrape with the clown, run away and then meet again a week or a month later to repeat the sequence.

One thing happens after another in a more or less coherent sequence, but that’s a pretty undemanding definition of a plot. It is probably just about enough of a movie to send you home after the screening not quite grumbling that you’ve wasted your money.

Instead of a two-hour plus film, surely this book was – and always has been – crying out for the full 12-part TV series treatment, with every character arc and nuance of story treated with respect and developed to the full.

Knowing that will probably now never happen made it impossible for me to really enjoy It much at all. Still, Stranger Things’ second season starts soon. Looking forward to that. – Graeme Tuckett

This film adaptation of It deals only with the childhood-set part of the book, but never really establishes the cast as anything other than a small selection of over-familiar Stephen King regulars.