Horror has never been my main interest and until a couple of weeks ago, I didn't give the new adaptation of 'It' a second thought. I'd been vaguely aware of its imminent release, but had paid little attention.
I was impressed by the trailer, however, and determined that I would watch it. And, back tonight from doing so, I can now add my own voice to the mass of praise that it's been receiving. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the movie and thought the performances from its young stars were very good all around. If I had to select a favourite, I'd nominate Jack Dylan Grazer's role as paranoid hypochondriac Eddie; Grazer really won me over in his portrayal of a nervous youngster full to the brim with highly-strung hypochondria, mostly as the result of the smothering influence of his overbearing mother.
The story? It's the tale of a centuries-old evil entity that terrorises the children of a small town every 27 years, feeding off their fears, kidnapping and killing its victims. 'IT' manifests itself in various forms - mostly in the guise of whatever will most terrify its victim - but regularly relies on its mask of Pennywise the Clown, a true horror of ridiculousness, all sinister smiles, malevolent eyes and psychotic laughter.
The children (who name themselves the 'Losers Club', in part because they are relentlessly bullied by the town's teenage psychopath Henry Bowers) are all tormented by IT, and eventually agree to band together to try to defeat their nemesis. The kids' dialogue - and the flow of their conversations - all had a very natural feel which reminded me of 'The Goonies' and 'Stand By Me' (the latter also based upon a Stephen King story.) Being somewhat of an outsider in school, a bookish kid who often kept to herself, I could really relate to the Losers Club and the bonds forged by the common enemies of first Bowers and then IT.
The movie got me thinking, too, about fear and horror and evil, and the way we are plagued with it, whether in wider society or in our personal lives. There's a deceptive innocence about the town in the movie; at first glance, it's just another American town, charming in its small size, carefree and happy in the endless summer sunshine. But what's hiding beneath? Trails of abuse and violence, whether it be from Pennywise or the mistreatment and suffering that the protagonists experience through more conventional means; Beverly being raped by her father, Eddie's mother projecting illness onto her son, Billy grieving the death of his younger brother, and the terrorism inflicted by Bowers and his gang.
Could IT be a metaphor for our own world, our own lives? We live on a beautiful but broken planet, and each day the news brings us evidence of fresh suffering. And there are our personal worries to consider, our deepest fears, not the nightmarish fantasies of our childhood, but the anxieties of adulthood. Are we safe? How safe? What if we end up, one day, like those countless other victims of this or that atrocity - another name, another photo on the internet, another name in a newspaper article. How long before we too are snatched from the shelter of Fortune's benevolence and dropped into the hands of the monsters of the night?
Whether justified or not, whether irrational or not, in our own way, we are each pursued by IT - pursued by the persistent drip-drop of evil filtering through to our consciousness from current events, pursued by the fear brought about by the general uncertainties of life, and the sense that, no matter who we are, there may be demons skulking in the shadows, just for us.