Stephen King’s It is the rare monster movie with too much monster
In the broad plot details, Andrés Muschietti’s 2017 Stephen King adaptation It is astonishingly close to Rob Reiner’s 1986 Stephen King adaptation Stand By Me. In both movies, a group of pre-adolescent kids run around the outskirts of a small town, bonding during the long summer days and nights. In both movies, one of those kids has a terrifying abusive father; another has recently lost a brother, and his shell-shocked parents have mostly abandoned him to his own devices.
The child protagonists in both Stand By Me and It are outcasts and nerds, largely ignored and forced to find comfort in each other. They’re all hunted by a pack of ferocious, dangerous bullies — bigger kids who are bored with their sleepy town, and victimize other…