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IT

Horror. Unlike last year’s other big-screen Stephen King adaptation, The Dark Tower, the filmmakers behind It didn’t try to cram thousands of pages of story into a single movie –and the end product is all the better for it.

It updates the ’50s setting of the book (and the 1990 miniseries adaptation) to the late ’80s and leaves the present-day part of the story for an eventual sequel.

In the small US town of Derry seven young teens band together to battle a demonic force that appears in the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård) and emerges at 27-year intervals to abduct and eat the town’s children.

The young, mostly unknown cast (including The Book of Henry’s Jaeden Lieberher) are uniformly brilliant.

While the kids start out as archetypes, they (mostly) get properly fleshed out into characters you’ll care about.

The movie’s real strength isn’t the horror elements – which are grisly and effective – but how capably the cast and filmmakers capture a genuine sense of the unease, insecurity, loneliness and fear that often accompanies adolescence.

In this film the adults barely register – and when they do they’re either indifferent or abusive, or as monstrous as the titular creature. – DENNIS CAVERNELIS 2017. 129 MIN. 16HLV. ALSO OUT ON DVD.