IT (2017)
IT (2017)
Directed by Andy Muschietti
Screenplay by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman
Based on the novel by Stephen King
Rated R
We come once again to another Stephen King adaptation. I will say right off the bat that I have never been one that has really liked Stephen King’s stories. Admittedly I have never read the books but I have seen lots of movies and TV miniseries based on his works. I have never really taken a liking to the subject matter he explores and I have never liked how too many of his stories recycle the same story elements and character types thus making his stories predictable. To remind my readers, the only King adaptations I repeatedly watch are Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) and Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption (1994) as those feel more like products of the director as opposed to King, which given how the adaptations King has been more directly involved in often turn out (either mediocre or terrible), having them be more filmmaker driven is how I like it. I saw the IT miniseries a while ago and was never impressed by it. Even in the 90’s and early 2000’s when I watched it, the series always looked cheap and Tim Curry’s Pennywise never sold terror. And thus I wasn’t completely impressed with this new cinematic adaptation. While it does have a lot of great qualities, it is severely lacking in the area that it is being sold on: horror.
The story is quite easy to summarize. You have a group of bullied kids called the Losers Club in a small Maine town called Darry who are visited and terrorized by a demonic clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard). Upon realizing that this clown comes to the town roughly every 27 years to feed off the populace and that it is responsible for the death of the one of the group member’s little brother, the kids come up with a plan to try and kill the clown.
First off, the child actors in this film are very good. It is not often that I or anyone else says this but this is a case where the child actors are the highlight of the movie. Each one performs the role they are given earnesty and with a quality that makes you say, “I knew kids like this in my youth. They were awesome.” This film sells the Losers Club (if that is really what they are called in the film) as the group to be with. Each character is pretty well developed, each with a distinctive personality and has a handicap to overcome whether it be hypochondria, stuttering, bad parents or even fear of clowns. This is a group that you want to stick together and overcome whatever obstacle comes their way even a killer clown. It is also worth noting that this film is extremely successful critically and financially right now and yet it really doesn’t have any big name stars attached to it. The child actors had to carry it and they do so extremely well. If that is not an accomplishment, I don’t know what is.
Also, the film looks great. The scenes involving the kids going into the woods, swimming hole or what-have-you are filmed in a warm, almost kind of nostalgic feel to sell to the audience of how much fun and comforting having a good summer with good friends can be even with all the ups and down. Even the darker, more intense scenes worked. The lighting and cinematography was carefully executed to sell an atmosphere of dread…until the clown actually shows up (more on that in a sec). The narrative does unfold in an efficient manner and I was relieved that this film took its time to actually unfold as opposed to The Dark Tower from earlier this year where that was in a mad dash to the finish line.
And yet in spite of all the good I mentioned, I didn’t really think this was effective as horror. A lot of the scares that this movie threw at me never really rose about the standard fare that audiences usually get nowadays. From the many jump scares, to the scenes that feature set ups for each character to have an encounter with the Clown to one degree or another, and even to characters running and hiding in horror with their loud, frightened voices frequently overlapping, this film just wasn’t scary. I don’t require horror movies to send me into panic attacks during a viewing or make we wake up in a cold sweat afterwards but they should sell a true atmosphere of dread and a malevolent force to be reckoned with and despite Bill Skarsgard’s good performance as Pennywise I never felt any real tension when he was around. I actually started to lose interest when he was on screen. I have no problem with a story where kids work to solve a mystery surrounding people being killed off in large groups every 27 years but I would rather have anything (well…ok not aliens I guess) but a killer clown being the antagonistic force. I don’t care if the clown is actually some sort of demonic force that can take many shapes (if I understand that correctly), clowns aren’t that scary. I would go so far as to say that the clowns in Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) had a more intimidating presence. At least they didn’t talk and had more inventive ways of offing their targets like turning people into cotton candy.
Despite my issues with the film (including a tiresome final act), this is by no means a bad movie. I really do feel that the chemistry with the child actors, the overall good performances and other interesting scenes that relate to the kids made up for the lack of horror and suspense. I really would have liked to see characters like them in a different movie. It could still be related to the supernatural but just not have a killer clown.
While this may not have entirely worked for me I would recommend that anyone interested in this just as a film or if they are fans of Stephen King to give this one a whirl. Among the many, many movies and TV series being remade nowadays this one really does stand out above a lot of the others as you can tell real effort and love was put into this one.
