This the one about the boys and the interstellar space demon?
IT is a supernatural horror/thriller from the director of Mama, Andy Muschietti. This is a remake of the 1990 miniseries, and adaption of the book of the same name by the king of horror writing, Stephen King. This film has been in the talks since 2012, and has finally to come fruition. First, it was brought onto David Kajganich, but eventually was passed down to director Cary Fukunaga. Which, after a clash with the studio, was dropped, then replaced with director Andy Muschietti, the director of Mama.
Now, if you know me, I was incredibly sad when Cary left the project. I loved his work on True Detective, and honestly his pitch sounded great. It would focus a lot on character, being accurate to the book, emphasizing the importance of the creepiness, and making it tense and disturbing. He emphasized making an unconventional horror film. The studio had their problems with this, they said with what they budget they had, they probably had to make some cuts, especially if they're shooting for something different and "unconventional". Upon hearing this, I was honestly scared of how this film would turn out. I was happy they picked Andy Muschietti, to do a rewrite and to basically take over everything. However, knowing what the studio wanted still freaked me out. Now I've seen this new It film... twice.
I'm happy to say, most of my fears were flat wrong. It's not the run-of-the-mill horror movie of the week that I was scared it was going to be. In fact, it completely nails a lot of aspects. The core Losers Club story, the writing, and acting was absolutely perfect. The feeling of nostalgia, the stupid kid dialogue that sounds right out of the 80's, and the acting was probably the best display of the fact that there is great child actors, Stranger Things and Beasts of the Southern Wild were not flukes or lucky finds. There are amazing child actors out there, the excuse "well it's just a kid" is no longer valid to me.
Another thing I loved was the performance of Pennywise. Bill Skarsgard pretty much is Pennywise the Dancing Clown to me. As much as Tim Curry owned the role for the past couple decades, I always thought of his performance as hammy, cheesy, and even hilarious sometimes. I mean, Time holds a special place for me, especially being too scared to look at the VHS cover as a kid, but Bill made it his own with this film. He's instantly more creepy, terrifying, and he has this feeling of power and uncertainty rivaled only by The Dark Knight's Joker.
Before I go further, I should address a couple things that might come off as "controversial".
Ready? Okay.
The original IT miniseries is not very good at all, and I have a couple problems with Stephen King's written material. Now, I'm aware that the original miniseries is a classic for a lot of people. Honestly, I think nostalgia plays a huge factor in people's opinion of the original.
Also, I have a couple problems with Stephen King stories in general. A lot of his characters are usually some sort of stereotype, so usually one-dimensional, he tends to be trope-heavy, and some of his stories end up being a convoluted mess, IT being one of them. However, the film solves one of these, and mostly solves the other. The film is obviously a stream-lined version of the book, so a LOT of stuff is cut (yes, the underage thing is cut too hurhur), and it also makes some changes for the good of the film, and it makes the story easy to follow. For the character issue, the film does a great job of fleshing out a lot of the characters, especially the bully character. But they also stripped back Mike's character A TON. Which honestly kind of sucks because, one of the things that made Mike special was despite the color of his skin, he was one of the smartest boys in the town of Derry. I understand time constraints pretty much made this happen, but it was disappointing regardless.
IT is not a perfect film by any means. I had one major fear going into this film, and it was realized after the beginning scene with the boat. I was scared this film would be jump-scare heavy. What I mean by this, the situation isn't necessarily scary, but the only reason you jump is because the noise that comes up when the scary thing is presented. Personally, it's the biggest flaw of this film. It straight up gets annoying at some points, and took me out of the film sometimes. It's a mainstream horror movie trope I had hoped they would get away from. That's not saying EVERY SINGLE scare was like this, but it was most of them.
Something else that bugged me was some things centered about the character of Bev. Now, the actress, Sophia Lillis, did a damn great job portraying her character. The thing that bugs me is, she essentially becomes this damsel-in-distress. In the film, Pennywise used this weird light thing from his mouth to hypnotize her, and makes her float in mid-air. What's the action that sets her free? A boy kissing her. Sure it furthers the love triangle story, but honestly I wasn't feeling any of that.
I also wasn't a huge fan of the kids beating the hell out of Pennywise, instead of using their minds to defeat him. I will admit, there was a relief to seeing this bastard get the cookies beat out of him by a bunch of 13-year-olds, but I also found the original ending a little more powerful. The original miniseries actually did a better job showcasing this.
Okay, after all of that, I do not hate this movie. It's honestly really fun at points, and very terrifying at other points. Some of the "scary" scenes were done insanely well, and I like they weren't afraid to get gory with the children. Not to mention, Richie and Eddie's dialogue was a damn riot. I was surprised how hard I was laughing at them. Now that's how you do comedic relief.
Overall, it wasn't the adaptation I was personally looking for, but it's a decent compromise for everyone. In fact, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There's something in me that wonder's what the Fukunaga adaptation would've turned out, but I'm also not dying to know, since we have a perfectly good one right here in front of us. I would recommend this to anyone except people who're not fans of mainstream horror, you might like a lot of aspects, but it does rely on the jump scare stuff somewhat heavily. The only thing I would like to see with a sequel is to keep the characters emphasis strong, and to turn down the jump scares for straight up creepiness. Oh, and for Paul Rudd to play Richie. Make it happen yesterday.
8/10
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