I hadn’t expected to see Stephen King’s It this weekend, but
by chance I managed to get to a showing on Saturday afternoon and I’m really
glad I did.
Read on for my thoughts on Stephen King’s It, the remake of
the 1990 TV movie and novel adaption, with NO SPOILERS.
In short, if Stranger Things, E.T. or The Goonies were
R-rated, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Stephen King’s It is like.
Needless to say, it is a very thrilling adventure film that doesn’t hold its
punches, and delivers lots of scares throughout.
(FYI I’ll just refer to the movie as It now.)
There’s been a lot of hype on the lead up to It, the
marketing has been really good and I was pretty surprised that a blog post I posted
last week comparing the It movies posters (remake vs original) was one of the
most read posts I’ve ever written. Early reviews had also been exceptionally
good, so I was really looking forward to it.
But, I wasn’t expecting it to be this good, it is genuinely one
of the best films I’ve seen this year and it feels quite unique. It’s unlike
any “horror” film I’ve watched before, it’s constructed almost like a high
budget action movie with a succession of set-pieces, but rather than car chases
and gun fights, we have small scale scares, mutilated corpses and killer clowns
chasing our protagonists.
What’s great though, is that it takes the time to develop
all of the characters individually. However, the nature of the scares and
horror sequence are cleverly interspersed, so it never feels like the film is
dragging or wasting time. As a result you’re on the edge of your seat for the
majority of the films run time, whilst continually building your emotional
connection to the characters.
Also, to call It a horror film feels a little wrong, it’s definitely
creepy and has scares, but it really does feel like an 80s childhood adventures
(Stranger Things, E.T., etc), they just happen to be dealing with a much more
adult threat. Helen O’Hara describe it on The Empire Podcast “if the goonies
had to deal with Freddie Kruger” and I’d
100% agree with that.
There’s also been lots of praise given to Bill Skarsgard’s take
on Pennywise and he is absolutely phenomenal, again he plays it more creepy than scary. But all the children that make up The Losers Club are fantastic actors
too, and it’s these characters and their back stories that elevate this movie
to great. As mentioned earlier, each character gets a decent amount of time
dedicated to their situations, some of which are even more unsettling than
Pennywise himself.
I won’t ruin any of the “horror sequences” but pretty much
all of them are brilliant, they’re very clever in concept and executed
chillingly. Playing on the fears of the individual characters allows for a decent
amount of variety in these sequences.
Overall, Stephen King's It is a great film and I highly
recommend you see it. Based on the opening weekend box-office I thing it’s
going to be a huge hit and people will be talking about this for years to come.
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