It

Are you scared of clowns? 

It's nothing to be ashamed of - Bozo has been making a lot of people a little uneasy for a long while now, and the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of bestselling horror author Stephen King. Well, not just him. Actor Tim Curry is also culpable, thanks to his iconic performance as sinister supernatural clown Pennywise in the 1990 TV miniseries based on King's novel It.

Playing the embodiment of an evil force - the It of the title - that terrorised the children of a small American town, Curry apparently ruined clowns for an entire generation. The rest of the IT miniseries, however, couldn't really match the actor's creepy clowning, which was too bad because It is one of King's most ambitious, substantial, harrowing and haunting works. Long in the planning stages, a new adaptation of the novel is now lurching its way into cinemas. So, does it do It justice?

Well, kind of. This is a terrific mainstream horror movie, the kind that'll have viewers gasping in shock and grasping for their significant other when the slow-building tension suddenly erupts into a well-staged scare. Watching It is not unlike riding the best roller coaster at the amusement park (actually, maybe the best ghost train is a better analogy).

Having said that, a fair bit of the material that made King's novel so skin-crawling - the subplots about It's malignant influence on the town, the subtext about the commonplace horror that co-existed alongside the supernatural horror - has been trimmed away in this adaptation. But what remains is a truly captivating and enthralling story about a bunch of outcast kids finding strength in their friendship and purpose in their mission to destroy the evil preying on their town and its youngest, most vulnerable residents.

Every 27 years, something rises from the sewers running under the town of Derry to feed on any child unfortunate enough to cross its path. While it can take many forms, it seems most comfortable in the skin of dancing clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard, who has a nicely weird array of leers and hisses). 

For Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), the leader of the self-dubbed 'Losers' Club' - which includes hypochondriac Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), wisecracking Richie (Finn Wolfhard) and brave Beverly (Sophia Lillis) - finding and killing Pennywise is personal, because the clown lured his little brother to his death. Together, the Losers' Club will face their fears to end It's reign of terror before it disappears again. And they'll do so without the help of adults, who either don't believe or don't care that Derry is home to something predatory and diabolical.

These young characters are so well-written and so well-performed (Wolfhard gets all the best lines, and Grazer and Lillis are strong actors) that it's a pleasure watching them simply hang out together. But It's a downright thrill when they unite against a common enemy, whether it's loathsome teen bullies or a demonic clown, and the movie depicts that with great, crowd-pleasing energy.