Andres Muschietti's re-imagining of 'IT' has been described as "one of the five scariest movies ever made".
IT poster
The new big screen version of Stephen King's chilling novel about a child killer on the loose in an American town - which was turned into a 1990 TV mini-series starring Tim Curry as terrifying clown Pennywise - is set to hit cinemas this September.
Reports from the shoot and the reaction to the trailer have set expectations sky high and now horror fiction writer Joe Hill - who is King's son - has spilled that he has seen the movie and insists it is a frightening as cinematic horror classics like 'The Exorcist' and 'The Thing'.
Hill - whose books include '20th Century Ghosts' and 'Heart Shaped Box' - said: "Andre's adaptation of IT is one of the five scariest movies ever made. It's tremendously humane, you love the characters in it, but it is just relentlessly terrifying. Only 'Jaws', 'The Exorcist', John Carpenter's 'The Thing' and 'Let the Right One In' are scarier. It's that good. It's that brilliant."
'IT' follows a group of young children who are faced with their biggest fears when they square off against evil clown Pennywise in Derry, Maine, after multiple children go missing.
The surviving children mature into adulthood and are forced to revisit their horrors as one by one they encounter Pennywise again.
'Allegiant' star Bill Skarsgard, 26, has been cast to play Pennywise and Muschietti has revealed that he absolutely freaked out his child co-stars during the shoot.
The filmmaker said: "He didn't stay in character when the camera stopped, but we did try to maintain distance between him and the kids.
"We wanted to carry the impact of the encounters to when the cameras were rolling. The first scene where Bill interacted with the children, it was fun to see how the plan worked. The kids were really, really creeped out by Bill. He's pretty intimidating because he's six-four and has all this makeup."
Muschietti has already revealed that a plan for a sequel is in the works.
Tagged in Stephen King