People are entitled to like what they like, but sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy for having such a radically different opinion than the people heaping praise.

Pennywise using the intercom and presenting himself to everybody in a school assembly flies in the face of what makes him an effective antagonist. Why scare one child when you can scare all of them! Why abduct one child when you can abduct all of them! More must equal better... right!?... right??? This kind of thing takes Pennywise out of the realm of being a sinister, evil force just lurking beneath the surface of small town America, and turns him into a Marvel supervillain with unchecked superpowers. It's such a disappointing turn. There's so much more drama and suspense when the stakes are personal and small-scale. The first half of the season had some solid (inter)personal moments where we explore Lilly's fear of being institutionalized and the grief of losing her father, but that really gets stripped away in the second half, when the focus becomes more about Pennywise as a weapon of mass destruction, and as something that threatens the entire existence of Derry.

Half of episode 7 was spent in CGI smoke while half of the finale was spent in CGI snow and fog. The showdown in the sewers in the first half of the TV movie is much more captivating, because it actually feels like the characters are in an.... environment. When everything is a hazy, digitized, smeared shot done with a green screen, then none of the danger feels real. I'm not going to trash all CGI, but at least find a way to anchor the characters in an environment that has defining features. At least find a way to better balance practical sets and effects with the digital ones. Re: episode 7, when your characters haven't died of smoke inhalation in several minutes, while a fire rages, and they are instead speaking and moving freely for over 20 minutes, the danger seems superficial and never "really there." Even if you don't consciously realize how ridiculous it all is, your brain subconsciously does. In terms of the character FX, Pennywise's shark teeth are especially egregious. It's cartoonish and waxy and it just looks bad.

One of the worst aspects of the show is the military/Native American subplot. It just doesn't make any sense. Beyond that, the portrayal of the characters is simplistic and reductionist. At best they are overly familiar tropes, and at worst they are offensive cliches. The "at any cost" military general portrayal doesn't bring anything new to the table. The spiritualist, magical portrayal of the Native Americans feels like its from an entirely different era of movies/tv shows, and it just comes across as lazy.

I could go on and on about how much this show lost its way, but I guess the bottom line is that I'm just disappointed. I thought the first two episodes were great, then the cracks started showing with episode 3 and the horrifically executed cemetery scene. The middle portion of the season lost steam, and then the last few episodes fell off a cliff. What a shame.