Last night decided to watch IT from 2017 to refresh context related to the recent Welcome to Derry tv series and this is way more than just a scary clown movie, you sit down thinking you are about to get two hours of terror but instead you get this wild mix of emotions that keeps switching between heartfelt moments, stupid funny jokes and then suddenly you remember oh shit there is supposed to be horror in this thing. The real strength here is the kids, the whole Losers Club just works so damn well together, these young actors have such natural chemistry that you actually believe they are best friends dealing with this nightmare situation in Derry. Finn Wolfhard as Richie is absolutely hilarious throughout the whole movie, I was not expecting to laugh as much as I did but this kid had me laughing constantly with his perverted jokes and wild comments, whoever wrote his dialogue did such an awesome job. The other kids are great too, Bill with his stutter feels so real and not forced at all, like Jaeden Martell really nailed that performance without making it annoying witch is hard to pull off when your character has a speech problem, Eddie with his overbearing mother is relatable as hell because we all know someone with a parent like that who treats there kid like they are made of glass and Beverly carries herself in every scene and does not just exist to scream or be the love interest of the movie, they all become the heroes of the movie even though its Bill who carries the movie from the start. Bill Skarsgard does his own thing as Pennywise and manages to step out of Tim Currys shadow, my only complaint is I wish we got more scenes of him just talking instead of always being surrounded by crazy CGI scares and visual effects that take away from the creepyness, like his voice and physicality are already scary enough without all the computer generated teeth and mouth stuff, for example the very first scene when he lure in Georgie.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1396484/
- Platform: AppleTV+
Rottentomatoes Rating
The story is super simple and thats what makes it work so well for a two hour movie, you got these kids in Derry Maine during 1989 and they start noticing other kids keep going missing or turning up dead witch freaks everyone out but the adults do not seem to care. Bills little brother Georgie gets taken by Pennywise right at the begining during that iconic paper boat scene in the storm drain but unlike other horror movies they never find Georgies body so Bill spends the whole movie convincing himself that maybe his brother is still alive down there somewhere in the sewers and that guilt drives everything he does forward. The Losers Club forms because these kids all feel like outsiders for different reasons, like Ben is the new fat kid who gets bullied by Henry Bowers and his gang of assholes, Mike is home schooled because his parents died in a fire and he has to work on the farm, Stan is the Jewish kid getting ready for his bar mitzvah and dealing with family expectations about the Holocaust, Eddie thinks he is sick all the time because his mom gives him placebo pills and keeps him in a bubble. Beverly deals with an abusive father at home who makes gross comments about her body, plus the girls at school call her a slut even though she has not done anything to deserve that reputation, witch is just how high school works unfortunately. These kids come together because they realize Pennywise is targeting them specifically, feeding off there fears and trying to pick them off one by one before summer ends, so they decide to fight back and go into the sewers to kill this thing before it kills them or more kids disapear. I really liked is how the movie does not spend forever on setup, it just throws you right into the action and you figure out who these characters are through how they interact with each other and the jokes they make, witch feels way more natural than some boring exposition dump at the start.
The kids are what make this entire thing work and if they sucked the movie would have fallen apart completely but every single one of them brings something different and they all feel like real people instead of just victims waiting to die in a horror movie. Richie is the fast talking kid who never shuts up and uses humor to deal with everything, like when they are walking through the sewers in literal shit water he just casually mentions that its basically millions of gallons of Derry piss and everyone laughs even though the situation is disgusting. The movie does a great job at describing how each of the kids is dealing with their own fears and own situations, this is obvious because they live in Derry, at the moment of this movie probably not many knew the reasons why unless you have read the books but essentially Derry is Pennywise territory, every horror event that goes on in the city is because he allow it to happen for example when Ben got cut by the bullies at the bridge and a couple pass by on their car as Ben screams for help and they decided not to. There is also the scene where Beverly bathroom was cover in blood and she was all cover up in blood but her dad didnt notice, like there was no blood there but latter on she bring the other kids that help her clean up, is that kind of good story telling without actually having to explain everything that makes you feel good about putting the puzzle together.
Bill Skarsgard does a great job making Pennywise feel inhuman and wrong in every scene he is in, his voice has this high and low pitch and sometimes very deep that is so iconic now days, almost like a trade mark signature of the monster. The look of Pennywise in this movie is way better than the Tim Curry version from the 90s miniseries, the makeup and costume design makes him feel like something ancient that stepped out of an old photograph from a hundred years ago, the washed out colors and oversized forehead and deliberately out of date outfit all add to this sense that he is not human at all. Skarsgards physicality is insane too, he does these weird eye movements that I found out from a quick search that there was no CGI help, same for how he can point his lip down in this strange unnatural way, there is one scene where he is drooling while talking to Georgie and you can tell he forgot for a second that he is supposed to be luring a child and just got lost in the hunger witch is disturbing. I dont find many flaws on the movie but I do have to mention that CGI is one of them, sometimes felt like they rely too much specially during those very dark scenes where its harder to understand whats going on and he is trying to be animated and funny like a clown but for me personally it does not work as well as Tim Curry who was more disturbing on a basic level that did not need all the effects. I think if you are actually afraid of clowns then Bill Skarsgards version will freak you out way more because he leans into all the exagerated clown behavior, its obvious that the 90s version going to feel more grounded as any other movie from that age just because there were more practical effects than anything else, this one in my opinion goes too heavy into the CGI creature stuff and looses some of that human creepyness that made the original so effective back in the day.
The movie balances humor and horror really well and does not try to scare you constantly, instead it focuses on building up the relationships between the kids witch makes the horror scenes hit harder when they actualy happen because you care about these characters and do not want bad things to happen to them. Every kid gets there own fear sequence where Pennywise takes the form of whatever they are most afraid of, like Eddie sees this creepy leper lady asking if he wants a blowjob witch is gross and uncomfortable, Beverly sees blood exploding out of her bathroom sink and covering the entire room while her dad stands outside the door not seeing any of it, Ben sees a headless burned body chasing him through the library after he researches the history of Derry and all the missing kids. Some of these scenes work better than others, the bathroom scene with Beverly is genuinely disturbing and the amount of blood they used is insane, the projector scene where Pennywise comes out of the screen in Bills garage while all the kids are looking at a map is intense as hell and probably the best scare in the whole movie. The final showdown in the sewers drags a little bit but its still satisfying, the kids realize that Pennywise feeds on fear, actually Pennywise told them and on that scene I felt that was stupid from him, so if they stop being afraid of him he loses his power and starts falling apart and crumbling away, witch is a cool concept even if the execution feels a bit rushed at the end. Beverly is the one who figures this out after Pennywise puts her in a trance with the deadlights and she floats up with all the other dead kids, Ben kisses her and she wakes up witch is cheesy but it works for what the story needs. The ending where they all make a blood pact to come back if Pennywise ever returns is a nice setup for Chapter Two and it feels earned after everything they went through together, you actually believe these kids would come back as adults to finish what they started even if there friendships faded over the years. The movie has this warm nostalgic quality that reminds me a lot of The Goonies, I would give it a solid 8 out of 10 and its definitely a solid Stephen King adaptation.
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