"It" review

I promise that jokes about "The Dark Tower" sucking will be kept to an absolute minimum.

If one ever wanted proof positive of the bizarre relationship that the works of Stephen King would appear to share with adaptation, they’d have to look no further than the time span of roughly the last month in which one of the worst adaptations of his work (The Dark Tower) was not only followed up by what will inevitably be received as one of the best, but that said source material, his 1986 horror novel “It,” is now the source of one of his best and worst adaptations, separated by 17 years.

In “It,” a group of outcast kids in Derry, Maine struggle to survive the deadliest summer of their short lives amidst the stresses of puberty, psychotic bullies, an adult populous that doesn’t seem to care for their well being quite as much as they put on, and of course, a seemingly omniscient psychic monster taking the form of a dancing circus clown named Pennywise.

Audiences at large are perhaps most familiar with this source material via the 1990 television miniseries of… debatable quality to say the least. Despite “It’s” overall laughable first pass at an adaptation however, it has, for better or worse, provided pop culture with a substantial legacy in the form of an iconic performance by Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown, leaving new Pennywise actor Bill Skarsgård with some pretty big clown shoes to fill.

For the most part, he does a rock solid job, decently walking a fine line between playful and menacing when the film asks for the character’s personality to shine through, though his presence as a character personality is noticeably sparse, reigning him in from really getting the opportunity to cut loose.

Given “It’s” legacy and even the “Jaws-esque” marketing of the movie banking on enticing audiences to see its titular creature in action, this may seem like something of an odd move but it’s actually symptomatic of what makes the film so brilliant.

The creature and the threat that it poses ultimately play second fiddle to the story of 7 kids coping with maturity and the abuse of their environment through the bonds that they forge with one another and the casting director deserves a raise at the very least for assembling a cast of stupendous child actors that would have elevated the movie even if the screenplay weren’t so consistently on point.

Their quirks feel natural, their bond feels authentic, they show true dimension that extends beyond the archetypes from which they were built and every single one of them shows a range that would seem to suggest they could all be stars in the making.

All of their talents are put to maximum usage in a coming of age drama not built upon horror movie terrors but the study of characters undergoing the crucible of adolescence, with a lot of the horror elements serving as a subtext for the trials of puberty and coming to terms with the loss of innocence to the harshness of reality.

From the conclusion of Bill’s acceptance of his brother’s fate at the claws of Pennywise whom is the sole reason refuses to give up the hunt, to Beverly’s bathroom breakdown over her sexually abusive father culminating in the aftermath of a Pennywise attack leaving blood everywhere that only the most tortured members of the group can actually see, the film is littered with the clever tidbits of allegorical storytelling that only the best of genre films have managed to pull off well and knocks them out of the park.

“It” is more of a drama than an out and out horror movie but the scares work where they need to and serve to punctuate key aspects of the story being told in a way that makes the absolute most of its chosen genre.

As much of a pleasant surprise as “It” is however, the film is not without some substantial flaws in a few very important places.

Opting to maximize story integrity, the film is to be the first of a duology, with this film covering the protagonists and their encounters with It as children and the subsequent film due for release next year covering the portion of the novel encompassing their adult years.

The intent is clearly to make the story more contemporary in setting as the laid out time skip will place their adult adventure in the modern day, which displaces their adventures as children from the book time frame of the 1950s to the late 80s.

Mechanically this move may make sense but one can’t help but also feel that with the retro movements of pop culture that have put a lot of the 80s back in style, that this wasn’t also an attempt to cash in on easy recognition, something that becomes all the more transparent when the cultural identifiers of the decade are relegated to occasionally explicit name dropped references and mildly out of place background elements.

This probably wouldn’t feel so pandering were it not for the fact that a lot of the story’s rhythm feels a tad bit anachronistic within the new time frame. The racially charged nature and psychotic drive of the bullies along with the children’s refusal to report to the authorities as a resource are perfectly at home in a story critiquing the puritanical gilded perception of the mid 20^th century Small Town USA setting but in the year 1989 there’s a lot that just feels out of place in weird ways.

The plot displacement and generally compact nature of film also leave a few holes in character development to be desired; the movie has a lot of trouble figuring out whether legal authorities can be trusted or not, the bullies outside of the explicitly disturbed Henry Bowers come off as self aware of their deplorable actions under his leadership with nothing actually coming of it, etc.

Perhaps the most problematic element however comes in the form of Pennywise himself. As stated before, Bill Skarsgård turns in a solid performance but he’s unfortunately a bit undermined by inconsistencies in his character’s presentation by the screenplay. The movie seems to be rather unclear on important details, such as whether or not the creature was actually consuming the children physically or simply feeding on their fear, whether or not the clown is actually his true form despite having an inconsistent susceptibility to physical attacks, whether or not it actually can physically attack the kids if they aren’t afraid of him, and a general myriad of loose threads that can leave the climax feeling like a bit of a jumbled mess.

By this point however, I’m simply glad that I was able to pick out so many legitimately great things about a Stephen King adaptation that overshadow the bad.

Whatever undeniable flaws the film may have, “It” succeeds in spades where it counts and even manages to deliver in territories you may not have even been asking it to.

8 Floating Sewer Balloons out of 10