Clown downer: IT Chapter Two is not very scary or funny

The problem that has always plagued adaptations of Stephen King’s IT is that the two halves—kids and grown-ups—are not equally interesting. Nostalgic coming-of-age tales of scary monsters and friendship are inherently more engaging than 40-somethings with bad memories. Chapter One put us in the shoes of teens navigating the treacherous waters of growing up while […]

Movie review: Stephen King’s IT balloons with big-screen scares

The film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel IT, long considered unfilmable, has finally reached the big screen, bringing new life and a modern sensibility to a story that is simultaneously nostalgic and damning of selective memory. The decades are swapped—our heroes are growing up in the late 1980s instead of King’s 1950s—but the coulrophobia has […]