Now Let’s Get to the Review...
When you get older, lets face it - no movie will ever truly terrify you. But to be reasonable, I believe as a generation, we have been so desensitized to horror and violence as a whole that it does not get to us anymore. I must make it clear though - ‘IT’ is SCARY!
***WARNING: I am going to start talking about scenes from the movie in detail! So those of you whom have not seen it yet do not go cry saying you didn’t want ‘IT’ to be spoiled! So with that…******SPOILER ALERT AHEAD*****
Throughout the movie, you learn little about Pennywise, besides a brief history of what happened to the first colonists to settle there. This film takes place in a small town called Derry, Maine where Pennywise haunts children every 27 years. Normally movies in general are not as graphic or violent towards children but NOT “IT.” The first scene of the movie depicts the first onscreen main character, Bill, and then of course his little brother, Georgie, getting his whole arm viciously bitten off from Pennywise’s razor sharp teeth. This then causes a mini river of blood to gush everywhere and flow with the currents of the flooded street. Poor little Georgie eventually is aggressively yanked down the sewer by the demonic clown. After this scene most would conclude that the poor little Georgie has been killed but from that moment alone, I knew sitting in the theater I was in for a ride with ‘IT’ and thought in shock to myself, “Wow…Stephen King really is a sick sick man…dang no mercy for these children huh?!” After Georgie, appearing to be brutally murdered by Pennywise, goes missing without evidence and from then on the mysterious disappearances of other local Derry kids begin.
Fast forward a year later, and Bill and his friends call themselves the “Loser’s Club,” and ever since Georgie went missing Bill tries his hardest to find any clues to figure out and help cope in what happened to his little brother. His support system, the Loser’s Club, consisted of a newcomer Ben Hanscomb, who has been tortured all year long by a group of bullies led by mullet-headed Henry Bowers. Beverly Marsh, also joins the group, she is a tough girl from the wrong side of the tracks; constantly tormented both at home and in school. Then joins, Mike Hanlon, a homeschooled kid who also runs afoul of Henry Bowers. The group comes together as friends but soon find out they have got all one terrifying thing in common…
Over the course of this movie, each individual Loser encounters an experience with Pennywise. Pennywise displays and takes shape of their worst fears and uses this as an advantage to basically season them; because nothing is better than the taste of their flesh once they are afraid. For example, Pennywise has a disgusting Leper come after and terrorize Eddie, whose worst fear is germs. He had the Leper chase him and get all close to Eddie, attempting to corner Eddie and scare him by holding a bunch of balloons asking him to come over to him (This scene can be partially viewed in the spooky gif below). Eddie luckily gets out of there and avoid his visit with Penny Wise. Ben Hanscomb, the chubby new addition to the Loser’s club (one of my personal favorite actors in the film) is briefly traumatized in the library by Pennywise’s imitation of a headless walking zombie monster…wow, this scene was kind of funny but scared me enough to jump in my seat at the same time.
Then there is Mike Hanlon whom is brutally being attacked by Bowers, but as he is being pinned to the ground he looks over and sees Penny Wise, with his mouth and face covered with blood holding which appeared to be Georgie’s forearm… See what I’m saying? Again, this scene was just downright disturbing! Although I find this to be one of the most unsettling scenes of the movie, Pennywise uses Mike’s fear of seeing his parent’s burn in a house fire as an advantage to weaken him whenever the opportunity is present. Another scene that I found very effective in pulling of scares was when Wise did something very cruel and heartbreaking: Bill wakes up during the night by a leak coming from the ceiling of his room, so he grabs a bucket from the closet. While grabbing it he sees a figure that looks like Georgie the day he went missing, dressed with his yellow rain jacket on and boots. This cruel trickery then leads Bill to the basement and the basement is flooded and Georgie is standing in the corner. Bill and him have a conversation but Bill notices that something is off about Georgie, and then starts to repeat over and over again in a more aggressive tone “You’ll float too…” and while Georgie is going crazy Penny Wise creeps up from the water, jumps up and runs after Bill in the most sinister way you could see something run. I do not know about you guys… but this would definitely warrant me getting checked into a mental institution.
One MAJOR thing that I think made this movie extremely successful as it is in the horror genre is the phenomenal soundtrack. The sounds, like most horror movies when combined with the scenes without a doubt, are undeniably the scariest part of the movie. This can be criticized as both a positive and negative thing. I think this can be at times detrimental to most horror films, but I tend to think that Muschietti did an overall good job in balancing it out and not relying too heavily on just sounds to generate cheap scares. In addition, one other thing I feel that needs to be addressed is Pennywise’s character…Do not get me wrong, I think this film did an excellent job in portraying his demonic nature just like in the novel, but I feel like there is a problem that resides within King’s development of him. Pennywise’s whole concept seems very solid at first glance- but his motive as a villain is a bit lackluster in my opinion. Pennywise can shape-shift to people’s fears, teleport seemingly anywhere he pleases, ingest limbs with ease, and use telekinesis—and yet you’re telling me this monster still can’t easily kill a bunch of nerdy kids? Well I mean the character has to scare people in order to murder them so what if they just say “I’m not afraid of you…So uhh I’m just gonna tip-toe away now buddy..” Does Pennywise just become a useless circus clown and starve to death?! And also, as stated before his desire is to scare children because they are easy to frighten before feasting upon them, so why doesn’t he just target a bunch of toddlers or infants? I mean seriously, no one can deny that babies get scared for literally NO LOGICAL REASON! If I were Pennywise I would just teleport straight to the local Derry mother-baby care unit and gobble up all the babies I could make cry with ease! See how easy a villain like Pennywise created with such a complex design and goal could easily be solved? It shouldn’t be that easy…but again guys, I consider this not necessarily a problem with the movie, but instead more so an issue within the novel.
While I do believe this movie is extremely great, ‘IT’ is not without its minor flaws such as certain content inclusion but after all, one must take into account that all 1,138 pages could not have been possibly fitted into a two hour film (exactly why there will be chapter 2 fellas). With that being said, to end this review I would like to deeply praise director Muschietti for his ability to stay true to Stephen King’s 1986 masterpiece, and manage to fit a lot of major chilling scenes/content within 2 hours; something that I believe a lot of move directors now struggle with.
With that, I definitely recommend horror fans to go out and give ‘IT’ a chance. Also those who really like IT, please don’t go too crazy please. And by crazy, I mean start up the whole psycho clown dressing trend thing again these coming months…because that might be even more scarier than this film making me want to go to sleep with a loaded glock under my pillow :) Haha! Like I said, if you are into chilling horror films I definitely recommend this clownish EVIL movie!
P.S. And no I would not teleport to the mother-baby unit and commit such a horrendous crime! I was just kidding that would be just terrible and sick on all levels LMAO…!
The Baugh Rating Machine:
I give this innovative horror movie a solid 9.5/10.
