IT (2017)

Many people among myself were nostalgia-tripping this evening as IT hit the theaters in Sweden. The 1990 mini-series was probably the first horror movie I remember seeing and something of a generational rite-of-passage thing. I know it by heart so I knew that whatever I was gonna see was going to be closely compared to the original. Not that the old envisioning of Stephen King's novel was in any way great or didn't need a new rendering, but childhood stuff.. that's some sacred shit.

First off, it's a pity the True Detective whathisname who initiated this adaptation didn't get time to develop the script in his own pace, like he said, and instead had to settle for only a co-writer credit. I'm sure his version would have been far more subtle and sinister than what ended up on the screen here.

Nevertheless, despite that it feels somewhat rushed, almost like a pilot for a tv-series, it is superior and more ambitious than your average horror movie in 2017.. in particulary as far as character development goes but also the acting of the kids and the humor. A lot of it made me chuckle out loud.

Bill Skarsgård's clown - giving "gingers have no soul" a whole new meaning - fades somewhat in comparison to Tim Curry's dynamic performance, altough admittingly he looks way creepier. But had they given him more screentime to actually ACT as oppose to relying on tiresome CGI effects IT could have done to Skarsgård what Joker did to Heath Ledger. I'm still positive his performance will get a lot of attention after this week's premiere.

Another disappointment was the  excessive use of jump scares, or sound effects. Unnecessery music where mood could have been set in a more subtle and creepier way. I mean here you have a novel filled with a huge diversity of horrors that could have easily made up hours and hours of film and this is what they ended up with - cheap jump scares, zero atmosphere.

The timing was just terrible with little to no set-up. I hope Chapter Two gets a better  director.

Greatest disappointment was the final showdown which dwells in all things not okay mentioned above. On top of that, you don't battle a feeding force older than the universe with baseball bats and chains, just sayin'. But ok I get it, it's symbolic and a commentary on something deeper than what physical violence can do to an evil clown lol.

Still, this is not necesserily a trashing. If you've grown up with the 1990 version this will be a fascinating alternative take, just cuz. It's IT for The Ring generation.

And you just gotta love that Victorian era

clown costume!

Most, if not all of the 1990s king adaptations were fantastic, classics in their own rights, both the cinema and TV productions. The ones I remember more vividly are : IT, night flier, the dark half, thinner, pet semetary, etc....well there are literally dozen of them and most are really good.

I'm going to give this one a chance, but no way it will ever replace the original in my cultural references.

even the cheesy ones, like Langoliers, are still interesting to watch

Posted by Prince_Pisces
I fail to see anything scary about this new Pennywise. Tim Curry, he is not.

Tim Curry has a comic vein which makes him a great performer. Skarsgård's clown is freaky bc he's chaotic and unpredictible not unlike a child himself, while at the same time appearing as a mindless predator. That's the basic difference imo.

Basically what @ItsMeRoman said.

The way we make films has simply changed. I remember watching The Dark Knight and felt as if there was something missing despite the extensive amount of work that went into it.. and it wasn't until much later that I realized it's the loose ends that ended up on the cutting room floor; how scenes sort of flow unnaturally into eachother. If that makes sense.

Posted by Miaou
Both are creepy.

The original is a classic.

The book is still creepier though.

The damn thing has been on my to-read list for almost a decade. Stephen King's Magnus Opus.

From what I've heard it's epic and from what I've read about it it should be right up my alley, that includes the more absurd aspects of it

Alright I'll stop now 😄

Posted by Miaou

Posted by enfant_terrible

Posted by Miaou
Both are creepy.

The original is a classic.

The book is still creepier though.

The damn thing has been on my to-read list for almost a decade. Stephen King's Magnus Opus.

From what I've heard it's epic and from what I've read about it it should be right up my alley, that includes the more absurd aspects of it

Read it!

You know how it is, everything feels scarier when we're children... Kids have the best imaginations. A movie can hardly compete with that. ?

click to expand

Yeah it's seems like King's novel could have sprung 10 significantly different movie versions (depending on focus) as far as the size of the source material goes, not counted by the number of pages pages but the extent of King's imagination and knock for making things up. I mean dude covers the creation of the universe in a work mainly known for a child-killing clown lol. That's an accomplishment.

This one is far scarier







horror sucks in the 21st century. It's like they are blatantly regressing to laughable levels.

Posted by FknNerd
I did not think this movie was good. I also think stephen king is a pedo, and I feel qualified to make that assessment as a fellow virgo on an astrology site.

You're a pedo?

Posted by Impulsv
It lost me when the whole thing turned out to be a dang spider

It's just one of its many forms, the original form being 'the deadlights'. I think for the mini-series they settled for the spider bc it's easier than having to explain the whole mythology of It... which would kind of totally focus away from the main plot. But yeah the finale sucked ass.

it's not a spider, it's a transdimensionnal/unspeakable being of pure evil that takes many forms, like all the bad guys in the hundreds of books king released in the 90s.

The clown and spider are just avatars

Posted by Arielle83
You all sound jaded.

After you've seen a few movies in your life you're bound to get jaded lol

And yes to everything you said @CrimsonGirl

Posted by Arielle83

Posted by enfant_terrible

Posted by Arielle83
You all sound jaded.

After you've seen a few movies in your life you're bound to get jaded lol

I've seen quite a few.

I don't believe in overanalyzing a stephen king story

click to expand

If it were Shakespeare or Coelho you'd believe in overanalyzing it, right? Despite that King is richer in character developement and knows the human mind better than either of the two.

And I wasn't "overanalyzing" the story but the factual plot structure and how it stands compared to the screen translations. It is after all the difference between watchable and unwatchable. Not like I was going after 'the meaning of it all'.



So what are you passionate about?

Nice review.

I agree with mostly with what you said, especially regarding Bill's performance as Pennywise and the Heath Ledger Joker comparison, or non comparison really. If only he was given more talking scenes where he could really show that menacing creepy side. The first scene with Georgie and some of the scenes towards the end with Pennywise actually talking and interacting with the kids were the best, the drool that always eminated from his mouth and sudden change from being sweet and clown-like to I just wanna eat your flesh look was really freaky and scary at times. I just wanted more.

The problem was that first scene with Georgie was so good that it never really matched it for the rest of the film.



I have to say though, we should all be honest and mention that IT the 90's mink series was not good, in fact its pretty bad in General, but Tim Curry as Pennywise was awesome, he saved it, and made it watchable. Also it isn't a film, it was a t.v show, and was hardly based on the novel, the 2017 film is an actual adaption of the Stephen king novel.

Nice review.

I agree with mostly with what you said, especially regarding Bill's performance as Pennywise and the Heath Ledger Joker comparison, or non comparison really. If only he was given more talking scenes where he could really show that menacing creepy side. The first scene with Georgie and some of the scenes towards the end with Pennywise actually talking and interacting with the kids were the best, the drool that always eminated from his mouth and sudden change from being sweet and clown-like to I just wanna eat your flesh look was really freaky and scary at times. I just wanted more.

The problem was that first scene with Georgie was so good that it never really matched it for the rest of the film.



I have to say though, we should all be honest and mention that IT the 90's mink series was not good, in fact its pretty bad in General, but Tim Curry as Pennywise was awesome, he saved it, and made it watchable. Also it isn't a film, it was a t.v show, and was hardly based on the novel, the 2017 film is an actual adaption of the Stephen king novel.

So I just(*) came back from seing it, and it was not as bad as I expected. In fact a part of me almost wants to say it was good.

This adaptation was obviously more based upon scare and CGI effects than psychological elements but it's not a bad adaptation at all.

It's difficult to compare it to the 1992 version because I don't really remember it and this new version makes different artistic choices but they're not bad choices imo.

As much as I'm the sworn ennemy of CGI, the excessive CGI does work in this context because the monster materializes people's fears, so the "off" aspect of the CGI fits the context.

I identified three main problems with this version, in increasing order of importance:

-I don't know if I'll have the patience to remain interested for the sequel, I don't know when/if it's scheduled

-it's clearly missing a temporal aspect wrt the original story, which was the "coming of age" trope found in a lot of King stories. It's supposed to happen over several months, and we don't feel this passing of time. And it's missing the investigation part of the story.

-the sound department was definitely the weakest link here.

In the domain of arts, sometimes less is more; This is an important creative concept, but they obviously didn't get the memo. Every 5 second there is a very generic creepy music playing or a horror drone sound, and it really ruins the mood of these scenes. Sometimes some music starts blasting at the most inappropriate time. The sound is really bad in this movie.

So obviously this movie takes some freedom from the original story structure BUT this is not really a problem. The reason why I said that I loved most of the 90s King adaptations is that most of the original King stories are not that well written and most of the adaptations were actually improving on the original material by making artistic decisions.

This one fits the bill and I think with a few improvements it could have been a great movie.

To the question "did I spend a good time watching this movie?", the answer is a frank yes.

(* just before DXP outage)