It's IT: What is IT?

While everyone is all abuzz with excitement over the “new” IT, I left the theater very underwhelmed. Admittedly, I was a seesaw of emotion from the pre-production phase, being that Stephen King is my favorite author, and the 1990 IT my favorite horror movie (I watch it annually, every fall, and have for decades). Even still, I followed the events unraveling over the readaptation for years with rapt anticipation, went through all the news, from one director dropping out to another picking the project up. I was even there when Eddie Izzard was rumored to play the infamous Pennywise. So I went into this new movie, trying to shed my bias, but within minutes, I was let down.

I remember being really iffy before the movie came out, and remember the trailer completely changing my mind. I went in thinking, maybe this movie will be closer to the book: it was not. I went in thinking, I hope the same magic is saved: it was not. I went in thinking, maybe the movie will be amazing after all: it was not. And unfortunately, this has become an end of summer horror blockbuster. The money is ranking up for the movie and critics are raving. But I wanted to share my voice on this. I wanted to speak up for some Stephen King fans here. And maybe my opinion is my own, which after all, is all an opinion is, but I am disappointed and feeling as alone as Bev did before she found her friends. And, point blank, I was not even scared.

Not only do I find that the CGI looked fake in several scenes, which completely threw me out of the horror, but the movie itself relied on gimmick horror and cheap thrills. This is not what IT is about. IT is about the horror in the silences. Take for example the 1990 TV movie, where Tim Curry, donned in his Pennywise apparel and make-up, stands in the woods waving with a red balloon gripped in his fist. How his face shifts from a jovial pseudo-kindness into the warped venomous expression of terror. This is what I have come to term "subtle horror," like Hitchcock’s shower scene; the fear is in what you do not see. But this new movie relied on scare tactics and jump sequences, where the clown buzzes its body like a plugged-in toaster thrown into a bathtub, swiveling its head like Regan from The Exorcist (which incidentally, I have just found out that this It has just surpassed The Exorcist as the highest grossing horror movie ever made). Yet, the bigger issue is what I have also hinted at, what was done when Pennywise was not on screen. 

  

In the 1990 version, and in the book itself, even when Pennywise is not around terrorizing the town and these children, the innate sense of fear is still felt; still chilling your bones like a sweat you just cannot get rid of even with the air conditioner on. What is ironic is that this 2017 adaptation used and sometimes abused the word “fear” throughout the movie (the worst of it being when Pennywise falls in the hole whispering “fear” as he fades) but never really made me fear anything. Sure, I jumped. Who does not jump when a clown is racing at a character, and subsequently practically through the screen, like the roadrunner! But I felt no need to sleep with a light on, or look behind my back for the nothing that would inevitably be there.

Even worse, though, not only was fear lost, but the magic of the story itself. The story of IT in general is not even about the clown, nor the several beings the clown cloaks himself as; the story is about the children, their relationship to each other, how their bond is so tight and strong that almost 30 years later they reband to destroy this thing once and for all. Both in the novel and the 1990 TV movie, the children go down to the sewer to fight the creature together, they are a united front, which is why they are unstoppable, why IT cannot touch them, which is not really made clear in the 2017 version. Sure, the children in the new adaptation have a remarkable closeness, a bond, and a comic relief beyond what the remarkable Seth Green and Harry Anderson were able to accomplish in the 90s all on their own, but I felt a lack of substance to their unique coming together. As Mike Hanlon (captured so effortlessly by Tim Reid) so brilliantly states in the 1990 movie, “There was some force guiding us that summer. It either came to help us or we created it. But maybe...maybe it's still here.”

However, the 2017 movie decided that they needed a damsel in distress, which is a little insulting. Not to mention that Bev is actually the strongest character of the whole cast. Even though Bev’s character was changed a bit in this new adaptation, she was made stronger, more able to stand up for herself, fight battle, speak her mind, and laugh at the little things. Whereas, in the book and the 1990 movie, she may have been abused by her father in many ways, may be poor, meek, and quiet, but something the Losers Club (or rather, the Lucky 7) made her feel was special, and she became strong. The difference here being that the 1990 displayed the character as finding her voice by finding her place, not adding to the voice she already had like in this new version. After all, in the 1990 version, she was the kingpin, the only one of the seven kids able to slingshot Richie’s mother’s silver studs. The boys needed her, NOT the other way around. So why is it that this new movie decided to have Pennywise kidnap her? I did not feel in this movie that “there was some force guiding” these children. I felt like these kids were broken and wanted to have nothing to do with the clown towards the end. Only until Bev was in need of saving did they form their search party to conquer the monster. But as this 2017 movie perfectly illustrates, she did not need any saving.

I know my opinions are strong here, and even though I really have a bad taste in my mouth, I do agree with King on this, “the producers have done a wonderful job with the production.” And they have; the cinematography is breath taking, the colors pop like Pennywise leaps out of the projector in the garage. And even though, sometimes the CGI irked me, the special effects were stimulating.

Though the production value may be beautiful, and the movie cinematographically sound, I cannot shake the aftertaste, and I really sincerely wish I could. It pains me more than anything to have disliked this movie so much, because it is my favorite story. And the story was changed in parts that really had no cause to me. Not all adaptations of a novel have to be faithful, I know that, but I felt that the story itself disintegrated like a rotting skeleton.

So I sit here, emotionally perturbed over this, because, like I said, I feel alone. And I feel that if the magic is lost then what is even left of the story. Stephen King makes a nod to it himself, in the source material IT, in his dedication to his family, of all places. He says, “the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.”