It

"It" is overweening proof that an adaptation can be simultaneously not-at-all literal to the book in detail and never the less completely faithful to the tone and spirit. Stephen King's book is one of his more epic efforts - over 1000 pages which, by King's admission, was his at-the-time summary of a whole heap of thoughts he had about childhood, fear and bits of American history. This film decisively snips the book in two (by deferring into a possible sequel the plotline about the characters in adulthood and committing to just tell the story of the character's childhood) and updates that childhood from a late-fifties-idyll to something more mid-eighties (partially to allow the 23-years-later followup to be set present day).

This does inevitably invoke comparisons to Netflix's recent "Stranger Things" series, which similarly drew on the iconography of the 80's (and indeed of a fair bit of Stephen King as part of that iconography) - and, indeed, one of the child actors is a "Stranger Things" alumni. And it does show some of the wisdom of "Stranger Things" that it winnowed the core kids down to four - with seven kids to follow, inevitably some of the "It" kids get little more than one or two core personality characteristics (and "jewish" and "black" pretty much count as personality characteristics here, a la Captain Planet). But at the core, there is a strong basic story that is held to about kids teaming up to fight an ancient menace that wants to scare then devour children. We get a strong sense of terror, the lurking menace is kept for the most part lurking rather than over-exposed, the kids are a non-obnoxious bunch, and, even though this is only half the book, we really don't feel short-changed for an ending - there is a satisfactory resolution followed by a thread laid down for possible follow up rather than something that leaves us unsatisfied. It's no wonder this has taken audiences by storm - it's a good relatable primal story told well.