Warning: Spoilers ahead!
This summer just drags on and on, and any kind of enthusiasm that I may have had for it in June or July has now evaporated. Summer has historically never been my favorite season, and while I will admit to initially enjoying the clear blue skies as a nice reprieve from the copious amounts of rain that the Puget Sound area is famous for, any pleasure that I may have gotten from a relaxing stroll through the park on a clear day is severely undermined by my undying aversion to heat, of which this summer also brought in abundance and continues to plague us with. I feel like I am back in California - I would often complain about the seemingly endless summer season there, and was hoping that relocating to the Puget Sound area would present me with much more modest summers. But, alas, this doesn’t seem so, as the days are still far too long and bright.
As another indication that this summer just needs to end already, I have concluded that the 2017 summer movie season was a flat out dud. Not in the same way that the 2016 summer movie season was a failure, however. The 2016 summer movie season (or, to be more precise, 2016 in general) was a failure because the movies that were released were just bad movies. The 2017 summer movie season, on the other hand, was a failure not because all of movies that were released were bad, but because there were virtually no movies released. Typically, I can browse Fandango on a given weekend and find a film that intrigues me that I may or may not see (there are many films I see that I never write reviews for). This summer, however, was wholly devoid of that effect. Using The Mummy as a starting point, there were only 6 movies that I saw from the middle of June to September: The Mummy, Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Dark Tower, Dunkirk, Annabelle Creation, and It (and I was only able to see part of Annabelle Creation as I had to leave partway through the film). And it looks like I’m not the only one who wasn’t impressed with this summer’s movie offerings - as MarketWatch reports, 2017’s box office earnings will be among the lowest in over a decade [1]. Fortunately, though, my 2017 summer movie experience ends on a high, and disturbing, note with It.
I have actually been looking forward to It. I haven’t written a review for a genuine horror film since 2015’s Crimson Peak, and, to be completely honest, last month’s review of Dunkirk was actually supposed to be a review of Annabelle Creation, but that opportunity was abruptly cut short, partially because I was extremely busy when Annabelle was released, making it difficult to actually make time to see it, and partially because I had to leave during the one opportunity I did have to see it. Adding to my aura of anticipation, as a fan of Stephen King’s work, I found myself disappointed with the film adaptation of the Dark Tower series, so I viewed the release of It just over a month later as an opportunity to restore my faith in the cinematic iterations of King’s work. Further still, after looking at the movie release schedule for the remainder of September, it looked like the well of creativity had run dry in Hollywood, as It was the only thing that seemed interesting this entire month, the one oasis in a cinematic desert. Needless to say, the environment was such that I had to put a lot of faith in It to both slake my thirst for an immersive horror experience as well as my desire for compelling writing material this month.
It is a remake of a 1990 television miniseries, which itself is based on a 1986 novel written by King. Directed by Andy Muschietti, this iteration of It is designed to map closely onto the book, and features Bill Skarsgard as the sinister Pennywise the Dancing Clown, replacing the aging Tim Curry. To be consistent with a statement I made last month, I was of course slightly skeptical of its potential when It was announced - as I mentioned, films based off of books are generally not as good as the books themselves, especially since the other film adaption of a King novel this summer, The Dark Tower, was very underwhelming. Couple that with my observation that most contemporary horror films are really quite abominable, and one could be forgiven for predicting this to be another project that was fated to crash and burn. That said, the film still had a glimmer of hope going for it that made my personal interaction with it much more interesting - unlike the Dark Tower series, I have never actually read the novel. For me, this presented a clear test I could use to see how well the screenplay and Muschietti’s direction followed the book: if I could clearly follow the events of the movie without stumbling over any glaring plot holes and have it still be impactful, then Muschietti succeeded at extracting the core elements of the novel that would be necessary for a screen adaptation. To both my relief and my great surprise, Muschietti’s version of It actually succeeds at this - It was really unlike any other horror film I have seen in a very long time, and, in fact, was a great film in general, easily jumping to the top of my list of contenders for best film of 2017.
It introduces us to The Losers’ Club, a ragtag bunch of pre-teen misfits who have to contend with not being the most popular kids in school, growing up in small-town America, and various family issues at home. Pause here. Already, It presents us with what I think is the most remarkable thing that it does well: it takes liberties with children. I have long made the observation that, in Hollywood, presenting children as anything other than innocent little cherubs who must be protected and unharmed is a kind of unspoken taboo. I cannot recall the last time there was a truly sinister child villain in film, for example (maybe Henry in The Good Son, but that was in 1993), or a sequel to The Human Centipede where the victims were children. This mindset, however, is completely thrown out the window in It. In the first five minutes of the film, for example, we witness a 5 or 6 year old child get his arm eaten off and flail around in a pool of blood before being dragged into the dark abyss of a storm drain. The Losers’ Club themselves, as well as their classmates at school, are a lot closer to what 11, 12, and 13 year-old kids are actually like, which is to say, far from innocent and harmless. This is apparent in the fact that the boys in the group can’t seem to help but make very crude “your mom” jokes and shout “what the fuck?!” every five seconds. Soon after we witness Bill’s (leader of The Losers’ Club) little brother get dragged into the storm drain, we fast forward about six months to see Beverly, the only female in The Losers’ Club, get called a slut in the bathroom at school and have trash dumped all over her. In short, It gives us a depiction of what pre-teens, both boys and girls, in small town America are actually like, as opposed to what Hollywood imagines they are like, or what parents would like to believe their children are like. And on that note…
The other thing that It merits praise for is for being a film not about a killer clown, but for being a film about kids who have to contend with the struggles of growing up in America and face the horrors of being an adult. Let me be clear about this: Pennywise is not the primary antagonizing force in the film. Rather the children’s everyday lives and interactions with society are the primary antagonizing force. I found this to be another one of the most glaring things about the film: there is always an additional cause for anxiety for The Losers’ Club aside from Pennywise. This is evident in the scene where Beverly is struggling to figure out which brand of tampon to buy at the drug store while trying to avoid her nemesis, Gretta. It’s present in Eddie’s over-protective mother, who embarrasses him in front of his friends and, at one point, berates the rest of Club, including an insinuation of Beverly’s “slutty” reputation. The group constantly has to jump through hoops to avoid Henry Bowers’ gang, the local bullies, who are always looking to harass and harm them, such as the scene where Henry carves a letter “H” into Ben’s stomach with his knife. This is present in Beverly’s abusive father, who seeks to keep her from hanging out with the rest of Club so he can sexually exploit her. This is also present in the fact that none of the adults in the film are able to see Pennywise at all and don’t seem to care when any of the children say anything about what they’ve experienced, similar to when we hear the stereotypical complaint from pre-teens that “my parents don’t listen to me”. Pennywise is simply the side-effect of all of this, the accumulation of the children’s fear and anxiety. This is not to say that Pennywise is a mere figment of their imagination - he has to be a real entity in order to actually kill the children and cause them to go missing. However, it would be interesting to see what Pennywise would be like if the town of Derry were less dysfunctional - if, say, children were actually well-behaved and parents actually cared about their children and listened to them and let them hang out with their friends. Would Pennywise be able to find the negative emotions it needs to thrive?
Speaking of Pennywise, I believe some credit should be given to the acting in the film. There was some concern as to whether or not Bill Skarsgard would be able to be as genuinely creepy as Tim Curry in his portrayal of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Now, after having seen it, we can put any doubt to rest - Skarsgard was able to surprisingly juggle the silliness of being a circus clown with the vicious nature of a demonic entity that eats children without dropping any balls or bowling pins. The result was something very foreboding and ominous, a stark malevolence hiding behind a mask of lollipop pink and red balloons, a malevolence that the audience knew was always ready to pounce at its prey at any moment, but never quite knew when that would happen. The casting and performance of the children in the film should be lauded as well. Unlike many contemporary films where, instead of casting a teenager to portray a teenager, production studios cast a bunch of 20-somethings and try to pass them off as teenagers, Muschietti actually cast 13 and 14 year-olds to portray The Losers’ Club. In many ways, they reminded of The Goonies, albeit more vulgar and realistic - their experience shown through as the cast had the challenging task of pulling off some very adult scenes, including scenes where they were half-naked, which they managed to do without losing any of the drama or humor.
In the end, I have absolutely no regrets about seeing It, and I highly recommend that any fan of horror fiction actually set time aside to see it, and I’m relieved that my summer movie experience ends on such a high note. It is shocking in the sense that it takes liberties with children that are largely considered taboo in the increasingly corporate politics of Hollywood production studios, where production decisions are regrettably made based on how much revenue a film can generate, as opposed to its potential for artistic value. There is something to be said of a film that challenges the status quo of presenting children as these wholly innocent and benign creatures to be protected and coddled and rescued when these very same children will likely go to school the next day and tell each other to go fuck off and die before throwing each other in trash cans. Looking ahead at the remainder of the year, there are a number of important titles on the horizon that have piqued my interest: Blade Runner 2049 in October, Thor: Ragnarok in November, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi in December. Unfortunately, much like this summer, these appear to be the only interesting titles being released this fall. In light of that, perhaps I can also use this as a time to develop another philosophical piece to publish to the blog...
[1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-2017-summer-box-office-is-hollywoods-worst-since-2006-2017-08-25
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