It
***
When your opening scene has Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise
eating a cute kid’s arm off, dragging his screaming, armless body into a sewer
drain, it does appear that all bets are off. This kid, the brother of a sickly,
slightly older, stuttering but tender-hearted Jaeden Lieberher, wears a yellow
slicker, has the sweetest voice and presence, following after a paper boat
made to ride rain water down streets of their local sidewalks in town.
Unfortunately the kid happened to follow his paper boat right to the sewer
drain featuring the demented Pennywise, with his devilish grin and
skin-crawling speech. Kids have been disappearing in town and this boy becomes
yet another added to that list. Pennywise has been busy.
Who or what is Pennywise? I think that is the perhaps the film’s specific problem that might be rectified in Chapter Two but in Chapter One (this film), he just seemed to remain a spectre of terror preying on the vulnerable kids’ deepest fears. One kid sees his brother in the water-logged basement, another envisions the warp-faced female ghoul from a painting, a third trying to flee from a “infection-and-pestilence” zombie. There’s the over-the-top “bathroom of blood” scene that was more slight and unsettling in the previous incarnation of IT but now has a sink spitting out hair reaching for Sophia Lillis (this girl, when older, will be breaking some hearts with that flaming red hear and penetrating blue eyes), wrapping around her head. Lillis then is unexpectedly blasted with a geyser of blood that shrouds the entire bathroom. Pennywise loves to terrify the “loser kids of the town” by starting with what torments them (one kid’s parents were burned alive in their home although he survived, and he sees desperate, ashy hands reaching from the cracks of a burning, denting door), before he emerges behind the disguise of whatever fears deeply unsettle them. Certainly not for those with coulrophobia, Finn Wolfhard (of Stranger Things) finds himself trapped in a room in a reputed haunted house (it is as if it dropped right out of a Tim Burton gothic retelling) where clown figures surround him.
Pennywise even enjoys extending his mouth full of branch-like teeth revealing that something deep within him seems to drain the life of kids, as if he’s forcing away their souls by exploiting and capitalizing on their fears. And Pennywise loves to do just that, lives for it. Homage to the previous two-part Stephen King tele-film are paid respect. The aforementioned sewer drain, Pennywise using a child as a puppet to speak through, the bathroom sink blood, the bullies picking on the kids, the kids joining forces to take on Pennywise as a union instead of individually, “Beep, Beep, Richie”, the trip into the sewer to find Pennywise, and the bullied kids retaliating for their mistreatment by hurling rocks at those fuckers always picking on them all make appearances. Investigating the town’s history, discovering that the horror house sits where a well once was, direct access to where Pennywise keeps the kids, the film’s gang of bullied kids must overcome their rifts and arguments in order to stop the clown ghoul.
There are plenty of loud sound effects to make you jolt, of course, and Pennywise rushing towards the screen to freak you out. There’s the dark and foreboding basement, the rooms in the Pennywise house (quite worse for wear and looks as if it was taken from a Grimm’s forest and dropped at the end of a neighborhood to bring down property values) with their opening and shutting doors, sewers under the town seemingly meant to get lost in with feces water just waiting to yield severed heads, limbs, and garbage; It (2017) has the right frame of mind to throttle viewers and clutch the handles of their seats. And if you love your 80s throwback eye candy (I noticed a Gremlins and Beetlejuice poster up in Lieberher’s room, with plenty of Stephen King touches that kids like me from that era identify with), this has that. The kids swear A LOT, and don’t even use the foul language effectively (I noticed that they use the words in ways that many kids might when getting to curse outside of their parents’ purview), which I thought was amusing , especially when Wolfhard butchers words. Speaking of Wolfhard, this is a far cry from his character on Stranger Things… he’s constantly crude and obnoxious. The bullies are the usual snarling and foul types of dirtbags that look for those weaker than them to assault and pursue with their own menacing jollies to consider.
You have the germaphobe kid with the clingy mother (Jack Grazer, who is like this mini-man, acting way beyond his years), the kid with the uncle who wants him to use a bullet-pin gun to punch holes in the heads of sheep, a Jewish kid pressured by his minister father to study his scripture harder, the pretty girl with the sexually abusive creep father and an unfair rep for fucking boys in her school, and chunky brainiac with a poet’s heart. This group of lovable kids was individually selected by Nicholas Hamilton and his droogs so they almost found each other by default. So unifying against the bullies and then banding together to oppose Pennywise; these kids grow stronger by facing them. And they fly everywhere on their bicycles, attend the local parade, drive past the theater showing A Nightmare on Elm Street V: The Dream Child, rib each other, and dive off the cliff into the nearby quarry; the 80s clan spending their afternoons and summer conquering their worst fears and living as we once did.
It was a fun trip back, although Curry’s not easy to replace no matter how Skarsgård is (and he does look fantastic, just plucked right out of the worst nightmares of those that hate clowns), and I couldn’t help but feel that so much that could be covered in a series plopped in February on Netflix to binge is left out for the sake of time in a theatrical setting. And that feeling of familiarity does indeed sort of sit with me as I watched it. Not that the trip down memory lane isn't exactly what I want to take sometimes. And before I watch movies that come from that era in October, It (2017) isn't a bad way to get the juices flowing. In a theater at 1:00 on a Saturday afternoon, this felt just right, ideal and fitting. It's how I used to watch the films this one emulates, so why not It, too? It certainly does show its appreciation for the original throughout if anything. So quite a nice pre-season Eve to October right before the month of horror arrives…
Who or what is Pennywise? I think that is the perhaps the film’s specific problem that might be rectified in Chapter Two but in Chapter One (this film), he just seemed to remain a spectre of terror preying on the vulnerable kids’ deepest fears. One kid sees his brother in the water-logged basement, another envisions the warp-faced female ghoul from a painting, a third trying to flee from a “infection-and-pestilence” zombie. There’s the over-the-top “bathroom of blood” scene that was more slight and unsettling in the previous incarnation of IT but now has a sink spitting out hair reaching for Sophia Lillis (this girl, when older, will be breaking some hearts with that flaming red hear and penetrating blue eyes), wrapping around her head. Lillis then is unexpectedly blasted with a geyser of blood that shrouds the entire bathroom. Pennywise loves to terrify the “loser kids of the town” by starting with what torments them (one kid’s parents were burned alive in their home although he survived, and he sees desperate, ashy hands reaching from the cracks of a burning, denting door), before he emerges behind the disguise of whatever fears deeply unsettle them. Certainly not for those with coulrophobia, Finn Wolfhard (of Stranger Things) finds himself trapped in a room in a reputed haunted house (it is as if it dropped right out of a Tim Burton gothic retelling) where clown figures surround him.
Pennywise even enjoys extending his mouth full of branch-like teeth revealing that something deep within him seems to drain the life of kids, as if he’s forcing away their souls by exploiting and capitalizing on their fears. And Pennywise loves to do just that, lives for it. Homage to the previous two-part Stephen King tele-film are paid respect. The aforementioned sewer drain, Pennywise using a child as a puppet to speak through, the bathroom sink blood, the bullies picking on the kids, the kids joining forces to take on Pennywise as a union instead of individually, “Beep, Beep, Richie”, the trip into the sewer to find Pennywise, and the bullied kids retaliating for their mistreatment by hurling rocks at those fuckers always picking on them all make appearances. Investigating the town’s history, discovering that the horror house sits where a well once was, direct access to where Pennywise keeps the kids, the film’s gang of bullied kids must overcome their rifts and arguments in order to stop the clown ghoul.
There are plenty of loud sound effects to make you jolt, of course, and Pennywise rushing towards the screen to freak you out. There’s the dark and foreboding basement, the rooms in the Pennywise house (quite worse for wear and looks as if it was taken from a Grimm’s forest and dropped at the end of a neighborhood to bring down property values) with their opening and shutting doors, sewers under the town seemingly meant to get lost in with feces water just waiting to yield severed heads, limbs, and garbage; It (2017) has the right frame of mind to throttle viewers and clutch the handles of their seats. And if you love your 80s throwback eye candy (I noticed a Gremlins and Beetlejuice poster up in Lieberher’s room, with plenty of Stephen King touches that kids like me from that era identify with), this has that. The kids swear A LOT, and don’t even use the foul language effectively (I noticed that they use the words in ways that many kids might when getting to curse outside of their parents’ purview), which I thought was amusing , especially when Wolfhard butchers words. Speaking of Wolfhard, this is a far cry from his character on Stranger Things… he’s constantly crude and obnoxious. The bullies are the usual snarling and foul types of dirtbags that look for those weaker than them to assault and pursue with their own menacing jollies to consider.
You have the germaphobe kid with the clingy mother (Jack Grazer, who is like this mini-man, acting way beyond his years), the kid with the uncle who wants him to use a bullet-pin gun to punch holes in the heads of sheep, a Jewish kid pressured by his minister father to study his scripture harder, the pretty girl with the sexually abusive creep father and an unfair rep for fucking boys in her school, and chunky brainiac with a poet’s heart. This group of lovable kids was individually selected by Nicholas Hamilton and his droogs so they almost found each other by default. So unifying against the bullies and then banding together to oppose Pennywise; these kids grow stronger by facing them. And they fly everywhere on their bicycles, attend the local parade, drive past the theater showing A Nightmare on Elm Street V: The Dream Child, rib each other, and dive off the cliff into the nearby quarry; the 80s clan spending their afternoons and summer conquering their worst fears and living as we once did.
It was a fun trip back, although Curry’s not easy to replace no matter how Skarsgård is (and he does look fantastic, just plucked right out of the worst nightmares of those that hate clowns), and I couldn’t help but feel that so much that could be covered in a series plopped in February on Netflix to binge is left out for the sake of time in a theatrical setting. And that feeling of familiarity does indeed sort of sit with me as I watched it. Not that the trip down memory lane isn't exactly what I want to take sometimes. And before I watch movies that come from that era in October, It (2017) isn't a bad way to get the juices flowing. In a theater at 1:00 on a Saturday afternoon, this felt just right, ideal and fitting. It's how I used to watch the films this one emulates, so why not It, too? It certainly does show its appreciation for the original throughout if anything. So quite a nice pre-season Eve to October right before the month of horror arrives…
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