It

If nothing else, Andy Muschietti’s relentless coming-of-age horror film It delivers the goods. Unfortunately, those goods are awful. The posters promise you a child-eating clown, the trailers promise you a child-eating clown, the TV commercials promise you a child-eating clown, and holy crap, do you ever get a child-eating clown. Bill Skarsgård plays the pivotal role of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, a shape-shifting demon who emerges from the sewers to prey on the helpless children of Derry, Maine. A little-known Swedish actor who most recently failed to make an impression in Atomic Blonde, Skarsgård gets a potential star-making role in Pennywise, and his performance certainly does not lack for zest. But rather than focusing on the children and allowing their relationships to develop, Muschietti single-mindedly lurches from monotonous clown demon jump-scare sequence to monotonous clown demon jump-scare sequence, lazily relying on ear-splitting soundtrack spikes to provide most of the “horror.” D.B.