It is sad that the finale has a high chance of sucking. :( I will hope against hope for at least a decent hail Mary.

Agreed! I found the third act less scary after It finalizes its form, but the first 2/3 of the book when It's basically just the avatar of malice and human evil, hoo boy. I had heart-pounding nightmares about It chasing Mike as the giant bird. Before that, my scariest book reading experience was reading Dracula in high school, mostly at night after everyone else was asleep. I had naively thought that since it was a classic, it wouldn't still be scary, but NOPE, it still was.