I wrote a quick review for IT last week, the link to which can be found here. It's short, of little substance, and can basically be boiled down to "it's all kinds of great, go see it". The reason I did this is because it's both an excellent movie and a very experiential one; spoilers mean different things for different movies, but for a film like this it would literally peel pack the curtain on the monster before it's had a chance to scare you. That said, there's also a more to talk about with this movie, and I thought I'd use this space to do so. If you haven't seen the movie, read no further.
*Obligatory Spoiler Warning*
IT was a surprisingly excellent movie. After the sheer disappointment that was The Dark Tower, I was skeptical about what this film could amount to. Stephen King writes a lot; the IT book runs to 1138 pages, just shy of the entire The Lord of the Rings, which took three movies with extended editions all running a total of just over twelve hours to get anywhere close to containing the information of the book(s) and they still left much out. If the story of IT was going to be adapted in to a two hour film, more than a little was going to be left on the cutting room floor. That's why I loved the decision to leave essentially half the book out. For those who don't know, IT tells two stories: one of the kids dealing with Pennywise as kids, and another of them dealing with the full being of IT as adults. Rather than try and deal with the complicated macro story of multi-versal, inter-dimensional beings and far less interesting adult characters, the film chucks all of that out to focus solely on the main characters as kids and their experiences with Pennywise; there's hints of the later stuff still in the film for fans of the book, but the core of the story is much smaller scale, dealing with fewer themes but more focused themes. Essentially, the filmmakers knew that they were making a film and knew the limitations of a film, and looked at a small number of things in great detail, rather than trying to give passing fancies of dozens of great ideas while racing to complete its plot in far too short a time (The Dark Tower once again).
With that in mind, IT is about a bunch of misfit kids who are tormented by an evil, supernatural clown called Pennywise that feeds on fear. It's simple, to the point, and allows for a lot of horror and exploration of the issues the kids face. All the greater detail which, while great in book form, weighs down a film's pace, is stripped away, and instead we get a handful of key ideas about fear and the various aspects of relationships kids have with each other and with their parents, all wrapped up in a literal embodiment of those things. The plot is as economical as it can be, which leaves as much room as possible for the scares and for the characters attached to those scares, a decision that I think ultimately works in the film's favour.
By building up the characters, taking the time to make them likable human beings with enough personality to carry a scene and enough sympathy to make us care, IT succeeds in making the scary moments scarier and the non-scary moments enjoyable to watch. Bill is a kid with a stutter who's lost his brother, Beverly is a social outcast accused of being a slut while living with a sexually abusive father, Mike is a black kid dealing with racism while also living with the loss of his parents, the list of issues that these kids deal with goes on, and their key to the effect that this movie has on people. The sheer power of the fear in the movie's scariest scenes are due to the fact that the movie takes the time to make us care about the kids, so when they're scared, we're not just scared by what we see, we're scared for the characters too. Without them, all their fear, all their actions are empty to the audience, so by choosing to make them a key focal point of the movie, it allows IT to be more than just a horror film while still doing an excellent job at that.
The horror hits hard from the word go and it never failed to leave an audience reaction when I saw it. The tension may have been heightened by the care felt for the characters, but director Muschietti goes out of his way to make each one as visceral and hard to watch as possible. No attempt to brag on my part, but I've watched a lot of horror movies, so it was a real thrill and a genuine joy to be scared in a way that I haven't by a horror in a long time. A big part of this the choice to adjust how straightforward Pennywise is with each kid, building a sense of paranoia from its very first scene. The opening scene with Georgie looking in to the sewer was considerably longer than I had initially expected based upon my experience with the TV-movie, but the tension I felt towards the scene slowly turned to paranoia as he just kept going and going, and while Georgie was lulled in to a false sense of security, I could feel that attempt from Pennywise as a viewer, even though I didn't fall for it, knowing what a monster Pennywise is. By contrast, Pennywise's first encounter with Mike happens very quickly, with little in the way of warning. As an audience member, I had very little time to get used to the idea that a horror scene was happening before it happened. Every scene with Pennywise is like that, tension turning in to paranoia turning in to fear, with variable time spent on each in order to force the audience to stay out of their comfort zone, and its absolutely brilliant. This seemed to be reflected in the audience around me: we always knew that an attack could happen, but we didn't know when, and we didn't know how, and we didn't know how long we'll be waiting, so the whole cinema was on edge the entire time.
With that in mind, I have to re-iterate my praise for Skarsgard as Pennywise. He commits to the character entirely, and while a lot of the praise goes to the make-up and lighting people as well as the director for giving him the right look and moves to be as terrifying as possible, a big part of what makes his character work so well is that ability to contrast between the insidious and the straight-up monstrous, the "thinly veiled evil" and the "quite obviously going to kill you in three seconds evil", all with a change of body language, speech, or facial expression.
I also loved the use and resolution of Pennywise's plot, both as an answer to the most important theme of fear being a component of growing up, and as a perhaps unintentional commentary on contemporary supernatural horror villains. The kids literally beating Pennywise by not fearing it anymore is something that could come off as incredibly cheap and cheesy if not done right, but the film has reinforced the sens of fear that Pennywise evokes from its very first scene, and by making fear an actual part of how it works is a brilliantly simple yet difficult puzzle to solve. You can beat it simply by not fearing it, but it's a seemingly all-powerful clown who exposes you to your worst fears. This makes every trial that the characters grow through meaningful, as it allows them to come to terms with their fears by finding strength and comfort in each other, which in turn makes the choice to focus on characterisation even better. Beyond the scope of how effective this ultimately was in the film, the thing that I loved most about Pennywise as a villain was the simple fact that creating fear was a part of his mechanics. One of the biggest issues that I have with modern supernatural horror films is that the ghost/demon/heffalump's motivations and powers are often unclear, and when the motivation is revealed to be "I want to kill people" or "I want to possess this person", it usually raises a lot more questions, usually at least "why?". The mirror in Oculus plays with people only to kill them, the demons in the Paranormal Activity movies just seem to knock vases and pictures over until they eventually possess someone, the demons from The Conjuring series seem to want people dead but do little in the way of actually trying to until it's time for the plot to end. There's suggestion danger, but the characters rarely feel like they're actually at the threat of death or possession, and even when they do, there's no real reason given, even something as simple as "they feed on fear". IT almost encounters this problem itself after a kid escapes death for the umpteenth time, but by clearly defining the nature of Pennywise as creating fear first and killing kids second, it deftly sidesteps that problem. Anytime Pennywise fails to kill a kid despite his immense power, the plot has an in-built excuse that he simply feeds on fear, and there's more dear to be gained from a living kid than a dead one. He can still kill the kids at any time, but he doesn't need to kill the kids every time.
Lastly, I want to talk about a couple of minor things that I found to be slight issues with the movie. The first is the inclusion of the love triangle between Bill, Beverly and Ben. While not terrible, and obviously an allusion to the train the boys run on Beverly in the book in order to become men, it's probably the least well developed of all the important character aspects. The film does a great job taking huge aspects of the book, discerning the important details, and only using what's needed, but in the case of love triangle there may have needed to be more, being one of the few times a change when moving from book to film could've been done better. It's there, it hits the beats it needs to, and it resolves, but it does this all without ever needing to be a love triangle; all of the parts of it that have some effect on the rest of the characterisation occur with just Ben and Beverly's involvement with it. The only other aspect of the film that was a little strange was allusion to the deeper aspects of IT's lore that also connects to King's multiverse. If you've read the book, you understand, but I couldn't help but imagine some of that coming out of left field for anyone just sitting down to watch the film for the first time with no prior knowledge of what it's about. Thankfully, it's kept to a minimum.
Rating: 8/10, this is still a great horror film, my opinion hasn't changed in the five days since I've seen it.
Published September 12th, 2017
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