ItFear thrives when we allow it to flourish unchecked in the darkest corridors within. It is a horror movie and coming-of-age story about a group of teenagers in Derry, Maine, set in the late Eighties. One rainy September afternoon, Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher) loses his brother, Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott), to a malevolent being who appears as a clown living in the sewers beneath Derry, one who calls himself "Pennywise" (Bill Skarsgård). When the next summer comes, Bill pleads with his friends to help him solve the mystery of what happened to Georgie, and ends up scratching the surface of a sinister conspiracy that has gone unchallenged for far too long.
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It is adapted from the novel of the same name by Stephen King, which was previously adapted into a television miniseries in 1990. The feature film deviates from these prior incarnations by sticking wholly with the youthful incarnations of the seven heroes of Derry, while intending to explore their return to Derry as adults in the sequel. (In the book and miniseries, the story alternates back and forth between the past and present.) This drastically changes how the story is experienced; gone is the dramatic irony that comes from knowing that the kids would ultimately triumph against Pennywise, though this heightens the tension for neophyte audiences. But It frequently infuses memorable scenes with the cold dread that comes with foreknowledge of the horror just around the corner, like with Georgie's tragic fate. Unlike the previous versions, It has been pushed up about twenty-seven or so years--no small coincidence considering how this correlates with Pennywise's "feeding cycle". While the past of the earlier iterations was set in the 1950s--including plenty of nods to the era like references to Creature from the Black Lagoon and I Was a Teenage Werewolf--It possesses its own nostalgia-laden view of the Eighties. The walls in Bill's bedroom are adorned with posters from Gremlins and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and the soundtrack is peppered with selections like "Hangin' Tough" by New Kids on the Block and "Six Different Ways" by The Cure. This gives It an unmistakable "Amblin Era" vibe, further supported in how the kids navigate their small town on their bikes and even how Georgie and Bill communicate via walkie-talkie. Coincidentally, the film appears to have been influenced by the popular Netflix series, "Stranger Things"--even the self-branded "Losers Club" resident jokester, Richie, is played by Finn Wolfhard from the same show. The Eighties aesthetic and the mix of fond memories of yesteryear and the awkwardness of growing up that it brings is as important as it was with the nostalgia for the Fifties in the original incarnations.
Stephen King's "It" was noteworthy for its exceptional length; as with the miniseries, It is forced to condense the content of the source material, with some details being different than the miniseries, and others more familiar. (If I speak at length about the miniseries, it is because this was my exposure to the story.) One of the themes that remains crucially intact in It is how the town of Derry itself appears to be a manifestation of Pennywise's evil, which in turn is a metaphor for how our individuality as children is corrupted by the influence of generations past, including that of our parents. Nearly all of the children's parents in It display behavior that at least lacks tenderness and is outright abusive at its worst. Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis) is forced to cope with bullying at school and an unfounded reputation for promiscuity; but even this is dwarfed by the unwanted advances she endures from her own father, Alvin (Stephen Bogaert). The budding hypochondriac, Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer), is on a regiment of pills, courtesy of his overprotective and overweight mother, Sonia (Molly Jane Atkinson). Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs) is home-schooled to keep him working in the slaughterhouse operated by his grandfather, Leroy Hanlon (Steven Williams), who browbeats him for his hesitation to kill a sheep. Stan Uris (Wyatt Oleff) is preparing for his bar mitzvah, yet his father (Ari Cohen)--who is the town rabbi--holds his son to an unreasonably high standard that only feeds Stan's anxiety. Even Bill and Georgie's father, Zack (Geoffrey Pounsett), conveys little sympathy for Bill's continued belief that Georgie could be found by tracing the sewers. To top it off, the kids are repeatedly harassed by a local gang led by the cruel Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton); but even his father, a local cop named Oscar "Butch" Bowers (Stuart Hughes), menaces his own son.
The newest member of the "Losers Club" is Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), a transfer student whose weight and shy demeanor makes him a target for Bowers and his cronies. But Ben has a fondness for local history, and discovers that his new town has an uncharacteristically high amount of tragedies in its past, especially where it concerns missing children. What's more is that there seems to be a mass neurosis afflicting the adults in town, which leads to seemingly good folk either turning a blind eye to evil, or even compels them toward the sinister themselves. In this, Pennywise becomes more than just a movie monster, but a manifestation of the corruption that takes root as childhood gives way to adulthood. The whole town seems all too willing to swallow the idea that there isn't anything they can do about the disappearances of their children short of putting up ineffective missing person posters that look like they were printed from a disturbingly common template. The town of Derry surely isn't so big to make scouring the ancient sewer system an unreasonable component in investigating a missing child like Georgie, but it appears that Bill is the first to even contemplate such an idea. There is even the suggestion in one picture depicting Derry's past that adults used to sacrifice their children to Pennywise, appeasing him in the same way as tribal communities used to offer up offerings to the "old gods". Ben shares that the founding ninety-one members of Derry all vanished at one point, leaving a bloody trail of clothes to the old well house, since covered up by a corrupted old house built on top of it. The derelict estate stands out as an eyesore and all but radiates evil; yet it goes unmolested by the citizens of the quaint little town. The house--and similarly, Pennywise--is a bit like an open secret, a kind of evil that everyone tolerates because they feel powerless to do anything about it, or that they are afraid to risk their own comfortable lives by standing up to said evil. Pennywise's influence is clearly at the root of this unconscious disregard of the malice lurking within Derry. He even intimates near the end of It that if the kids simply let him go about his feeding routine, that by the time the next cycle comes around, they will have already moved on with their lives and forgotten about Derry. The most subtle poison that Pennywise offers them is to be entranced by the hypnotic spell of adulthood, one that ravages the integrity of youth like a paper boat caught in a storm drain.
Recommended for: Fans of a scary horror movie that preys on the surprisingly common phobia of clowns, while exploring the awkward feelings of insecurity and disquiet that comes with adolescence. For those only familiar with the miniseries, it may be surprising that It earns its R-rating largely through its profanity-intensive dialogue. Despite this, the film captures a nostalgic feeling befitting the setting and is replete with recognizable metaphors for growing up via the terror-filled visions its sinister antagonist conjures in its victims.
Stephen King's "It" was noteworthy for its exceptional length; as with the miniseries, It is forced to condense the content of the source material, with some details being different than the miniseries, and others more familiar. (If I speak at length about the miniseries, it is because this was my exposure to the story.) One of the themes that remains crucially intact in It is how the town of Derry itself appears to be a manifestation of Pennywise's evil, which in turn is a metaphor for how our individuality as children is corrupted by the influence of generations past, including that of our parents. Nearly all of the children's parents in It display behavior that at least lacks tenderness and is outright abusive at its worst. Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis) is forced to cope with bullying at school and an unfounded reputation for promiscuity; but even this is dwarfed by the unwanted advances she endures from her own father, Alvin (Stephen Bogaert). The budding hypochondriac, Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer), is on a regiment of pills, courtesy of his overprotective and overweight mother, Sonia (Molly Jane Atkinson). Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs) is home-schooled to keep him working in the slaughterhouse operated by his grandfather, Leroy Hanlon (Steven Williams), who browbeats him for his hesitation to kill a sheep. Stan Uris (Wyatt Oleff) is preparing for his bar mitzvah, yet his father (Ari Cohen)--who is the town rabbi--holds his son to an unreasonably high standard that only feeds Stan's anxiety. Even Bill and Georgie's father, Zack (Geoffrey Pounsett), conveys little sympathy for Bill's continued belief that Georgie could be found by tracing the sewers. To top it off, the kids are repeatedly harassed by a local gang led by the cruel Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton); but even his father, a local cop named Oscar "Butch" Bowers (Stuart Hughes), menaces his own son.
The newest member of the "Losers Club" is Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), a transfer student whose weight and shy demeanor makes him a target for Bowers and his cronies. But Ben has a fondness for local history, and discovers that his new town has an uncharacteristically high amount of tragedies in its past, especially where it concerns missing children. What's more is that there seems to be a mass neurosis afflicting the adults in town, which leads to seemingly good folk either turning a blind eye to evil, or even compels them toward the sinister themselves. In this, Pennywise becomes more than just a movie monster, but a manifestation of the corruption that takes root as childhood gives way to adulthood. The whole town seems all too willing to swallow the idea that there isn't anything they can do about the disappearances of their children short of putting up ineffective missing person posters that look like they were printed from a disturbingly common template. The town of Derry surely isn't so big to make scouring the ancient sewer system an unreasonable component in investigating a missing child like Georgie, but it appears that Bill is the first to even contemplate such an idea. There is even the suggestion in one picture depicting Derry's past that adults used to sacrifice their children to Pennywise, appeasing him in the same way as tribal communities used to offer up offerings to the "old gods". Ben shares that the founding ninety-one members of Derry all vanished at one point, leaving a bloody trail of clothes to the old well house, since covered up by a corrupted old house built on top of it. The derelict estate stands out as an eyesore and all but radiates evil; yet it goes unmolested by the citizens of the quaint little town. The house--and similarly, Pennywise--is a bit like an open secret, a kind of evil that everyone tolerates because they feel powerless to do anything about it, or that they are afraid to risk their own comfortable lives by standing up to said evil. Pennywise's influence is clearly at the root of this unconscious disregard of the malice lurking within Derry. He even intimates near the end of It that if the kids simply let him go about his feeding routine, that by the time the next cycle comes around, they will have already moved on with their lives and forgotten about Derry. The most subtle poison that Pennywise offers them is to be entranced by the hypnotic spell of adulthood, one that ravages the integrity of youth like a paper boat caught in a storm drain.
Recommended for: Fans of a scary horror movie that preys on the surprisingly common phobia of clowns, while exploring the awkward feelings of insecurity and disquiet that comes with adolescence. For those only familiar with the miniseries, it may be surprising that It earns its R-rating largely through its profanity-intensive dialogue. Despite this, the film captures a nostalgic feeling befitting the setting and is replete with recognizable metaphors for growing up via the terror-filled visions its sinister antagonist conjures in its victims.