Summary
A spiritually faithful adaptation of one of Stephen King’s most beloved terrors, this superior horror film brings the town of Derry to life and sets us up for even more scares to come.
It is interesting experiencing Stephen King’s IT from the perspective of 2017. There is almost a collective pop cultural knowledge of the event of the story through its persistent iconography. The clown. The balloons. The storm drain. “You’ll float too.” Some even attribute modern coulrophobic archetypes to King.
Director Andy Muschietti is highly aware of this in the latest adaptation of the story. Indeed, in a case of pop eating itself, the new film adaptation comes out in the wake of Netflix’s Stranger Things, which in turn tapped the rich vein of King references. So entering into this over 30 years after it was first released comes with an unavoidable amount of baggage.*
Rather than divide its time between the 1950s and the 1980s, as was the case in King’s book, screenwriters Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman have updated the childhood section to the late 1980s and ditched the adult section entirely. Following the death of his younger brother Georgie, in a scene full of textbook fidelity, ‘Stuttering’ Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) and his new friends are drawn together to fight the growing evil beneath the town of Derry, one who manifests in the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård).
The choice to split the timelines of IT into the distinct settings immediately loses one aspect of the mystery and discovery that King created in one of his longest works to date. What was a slow buld-up, uncovering horrific truths in the past and the present, is now more of a straightforward horror narrative. However, what is now known as ‘Chapter 1’ (or ‘The Losers’ Club’) replaces this approach with a streamlined set of scares that is no less impactful.
Like many of other works written by King, the primary appeal of IT comes from the sense of camaraderie from the amazing collection of young actors Muschietti has assembled. The group of kids is our collective childhood experience. The adorkably overweight Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), the stuttering but wise Bill, the fragile dichotomy of Beverley (Sophia Lillis) who refuses to be a victim, the wisecracking Richie (Finn Wolfhard), the hypochondriac Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), perpetual outsider Mike (Chosen Jacobs) and so on. Each child is more than a trope, they are our avatars into this world.
Muschietti occasionally hits the 80s tone a little too hard at times, wasting no opportunity to throw in a pop song, video game, or iconic film reference. The 1980s is the modern currency of nostalgia, after all, and it is hard to imagine the original setting of the 1950s working in a contemporary film. Even so, as a veteran of Park Chan-wook’s films, Chung Chung-hoon’s cinematography is gorgeously vivid, bringing the fictional town of Derry, Maine to life in a tangible way. It’s turtles all the way down, people.
At the heart of it all is Skarsgård’s transformative performance as Pennywise. For many of us, clowns are inherently scary, but the actor manages to briefly convince us that kids would be lured into his playhouse of horrors as well. The benefit of modern special effects. means the clown isn’t limited to one size or even one form, fully taking advantage of claustrophobic spaces and the size of cinema screen. While some of the jumps may rely on the audio shock of the ‘Dolby scare,’ Benjamin Wallfisch’s moody score keeps audiences unsettled throughout.
It’s no secret that plans are already underway for ‘Chapter 2,’ which will focus on the adult counterparts of the Losers’ Club. Yet what Muschietti has achieved here is a complete entity. It may not always be wholly faithful to the text, but it works as both a set-up for a further adventure and a complete tale unto itself. As The Year of Stephen King Adaptations continues, from The Mist to the disappointing The Dark Tower, Constant Readers will find little to quibble about here. IT is a great horror film that leaves us hungry for more.
*NB: Elements of this review were adapted from a discussion the reviewer penned for GoodReads after reading the original novel.
