IT might not scare you, and that doesn’t matter. As a child of the 80’s, I grew up on B-movie horror schlock like Basket Case, Creepshow, The Re-Animator, and Return of the Living Dead. I watched Saturday Night Shocker, Elvira double-features, Twilight Zone, and Tales from the Crypt. My older cousins used to trick us into watching terrible movies like Scanners, and whatever Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street movie they just bootlegged from the video store. Some of you Peter Jackson fans might remember a quaint film of his called Bad Taste. No? Good, it’s probably for the better. The point I’m getting at is that as an adult, I don’t find horror movies scary. So when I go to see a horror movie, I don’t expect to be scared. But I do expect to be entertained.
IT does not fail to entertain. In a video landscape dominated by invisible ghosts, demonic possessions, and serial killers, it’s quite nice to see a good ol’ fashioned monster movie again.
For those of you familiar with the book, just know going in that the movie takes a lot of creative liberties in updating it for the present day audience. The setting for the Loser’s Club kids has been bumped up from the 50’s to the late 80’s; a very smart decision by the filmmakers since the vast majority of the audience will recognize the technology, and get a laugh out of the movie and music references. A good number of King’s books took place in the 50’s because that was a nostalgic era for him, and the fillmmakers take this technique and apply it to us today, and it works. It probably didn’t hurt that a very King-esque show called Stranger Things attempted this last year with huge success. It’s a bit of an odd circle that has come around, as IT is cashing in on an 80’s era craze that was kicked off by a show highly influenced by King himself.
Likewise, some of the monster encounters have been changed as well. Kids just weren’t afraid of the same things in the 80’s that they were 30 years before. I won’t spoil them here, as the various shapes Pennywise takes are what keep you guessing. Speaking of Pennywise, the great Tim Curry will always hold the mantle, but Bill Skarsgard takes the clown and makes him his own. Curry worked with what he had, which was a script that wasn’t the best, and special effects that were limited by the technology of the time and probably gimped by a made-for-television budget. Here, Skarsgard gets to be exactly the clown he wants to be, and for the most part it works. I say “the most part” because I fail to believe that any child, ever, would’ve talked to that f***ing clown if they ever saw him. Curry’s talent was that he could go from goofy and happy to creepy motherf***er in no time flat. Skarsgard is only given one opportunity to show his range, and that’s at the beginning of the film, during the storm drain scene that’s been previewed to death. He does a fantastic job, but from there on out his goofiness is subdued and he’s in full on boogeyman mode.
The child actors do an excellent job of.. well.. acting like children. Not the snobby, fake children we see on TV all the time, but authentic 80’s kids, complete with the trash mouth and mom jokes that we used to be able to tell before political correctness ruined our fun. They play off each other and work well together, and toward the end of the movie you like these kids and don’t want to see anything bad happen to them. The only one to get lost in the fray is Mike, who is the only black character in the film. Because he appears so late in the children’s story, most of his events are shown solo, before he’s a part of the group. Fret not, though. He plays a big part as an adult, a fact I don’t consider a spoiler since adult Mike is mentioned within the first 50 pages of the 1,100 page book. But that’s another movie.
I mentioned before how I expect horror movies to entertain me. One of the things I personally enjoy is seeing the monster. I don’t subscribe to the “less is more” ideology. I go to a monster flick to see a monster. Not a tail slipping around a corner, or a scream into a camera, or cutaways just as the Big Bad is about to show itself. I’ve never liked waiting until the end of the movie for a big reveal, because by that point, it’s either going to pay off, or it isn’t. The great thing about IT is that it lays all its cards out on the table. In order to scare the kids, IT has to appear to the kids. And appear, it does. Repeatedly, for extended amounts of time, and sometimes in pretty unexpected ways. It’s all right there in front for us to see, and I can appreciate that.
As someone who loved the book, I kinda feel like I’m in the same little smug bubble that all the Harry Potter fans were in when those movies were hitting theaters. They were long books, and though they tried, there were a lot of moments or objects that made an appearance in the movie, but never got explained. The same happens here. As one of the enlightened few, I know the whys and hows of some of the things that happened, that casual viewers will overlook, or just be a little confused. Perhaps some of these things will be explained in the newly announced Chapter Two, but I still have a feeling there will be a lot of loose ends left untied.
While the film was great, it wasn’t perfect. When you’re condensing half of an 1,100-plus page book into a two and half hour movie, some things get sacrificed. One thing that’s hard to overlook is the pace at which the movie starts off. Make sure you pee before the movie, because once it starts, there’s very little downtime. It’s cut very quick and it proceeds with one punch after another for at least the first hour. This was a main complaint in a lot of reviews that I read, and the only thing I can say about it is, “How would you have done it?” I personally wouldn’t wish the editing job to my worst enemy. King’s book is a twisting, convoluted narrative that flashes back and forth between the Losers as kids and adults. To create a film that tells their story as kids from start to finish is to rip the book apart and put it back together again. I’d like to see one of these critics tackle that one. No takers? Well, okay then.
Another drawback to the film is that large parts of the book were reduced to a few Easter eggs in the movie. No small one being the Bill’s bike, Silver, and its rather large role in both the kids’ and the adults’ stories. These luckily are things that won’t be noticed or missed by the casual viewer, but for fans it’s a hint at what could have been. Also, I do think Stan’s fear manifestation pushed our suspension of disbelief just a tad. It’s not that it wasn’t creepy, it just lacked the weight and tangibility of the others. I couldn’t see Stan being so afraid of this thing as to motivate Pennywise to mimic it.
As a film, IT needed to succeed, not only for the fans, but for monster movies in general. Luckily, it does. The filmmakers used Pennywise’s virtually unlimited repertoire to create some pretty freaky shit. And while some could’ve been better than others, the groundwork was laid for a truly epic sequel. I for one, am looking forward to 2019.
