Sound Off! IT

Welcome back to Sound Off!, a semi-regular column where members of Speculative Chic gather together to chat about the latest BIG THING in entertainment. This time, face your fears and discuss IT, which premiered in the United States on Friday, September 8, 2017.

Sound Off! is meant to be a reaction, but not necessarily a review. After all, while we are all individuals, even mutual love of something (or hate) can come from different places: you may find everything from critique to fangirling to maybe even hate-watching.

Now, join Shara White, Casey Price, and Nancy O’Toole Meservier as they talk about IT! [Note: No spoilers.]

Shara: Maybe I should be ashamed for saying so, but this 2017 film is my first experience with anything resembling Stephen King’s IT. I haven’t read the book. I haven’t seen the television adaptation with Tim Curry. I am, however, somewhat familiar with the nature of the story and with Pennywise, and after watching the trailers and a sneak peak, I was very much looking forward to seeing this movie in theaters.

Watching IT was an an odd experience, for a few reasons. One, because I always have a sort of whiplash reading/watching a classic when I’m so familiar with the material that’s come after, which leads to my second reason watching this movie was an odd experience: Stranger Things. I knew Netflix’s original series was an homage to Stephen King’s classic (among many other things), but holy moly — I’m starting to understand my husband’s discontent about that show. There’s a fine line between homage and just outright… I don’t want to say theft. It’s just that I didn’t realize how many pieces of other properties were lifted wholesale in order to tell that story and how it’s glued together with so much nostalgia. The saving grace is that no one in their right mind is pretending Stranger Things is original material. The show celebrates and owns its influences and inspirations.

So while this Sound Off isn’t about Stranger Things, my experience of having seen Stranger Things before experiencing any form of IT made quite a great number of things about watching the movie rather jarring. Especially seeing Finn Wolfhard, who played lead Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things, hide behind the Coke-bottle glasses as Richie Tozier of IT. Then other similarities popped up, and I started wondering why this story keeps getting told over and over. Even the final climax wasn’t as powerful as I felt it could be, because I felt I’d seen it before, and I’m not even blaming Stranger Things for that one.

There were some legitimately creepy moments in the movie for me. The opening was beautiful until it turned chilling. The scene with the projector was startling and claustrophobic, and I kept wanting to yell, “Unplug the damn thing!” And there’s a genius moment in the library when Ben is doing his research and in the background, over Ben’s right shoulder as the Pennywise music is playing and we know things are about to get weird, there’s this little old lady just standing there being creepy as fuck.

But those are little, flourishing moments. I left the movie theater not thinking about what a terrifying horror movie I’d seen, but rather how the worst monsters in the movie were the adults in these kids’ lives (with the arguable exception of Bill’s dad). Don’t get me wrong: it all makes sense, thematically, and why Pennywise chooses to feed on and terrorize the children of Derry. It’s just a theme I’ve seen before, which is a shame, because IT’s the classic the theme is probably based on.

Beverly Marsh, however, is freaking awesome.

Casey: I have taught myself the art of accepting a film for what it is rather than what it is not. This meant learning to distance adaptations from their source material. I had mixed feelings about going to see IT; Stephen King movies are extremely hit or miss for me. I was more than a little let down by The Dark Tower (the more I think about it, the less thrilled I become about that film), so there was some trepidation going into IT.

Let me go ahead and get my one real complaint out of the way: I hated what they did to Beverly’s character. My two movie-viewing companions argued in favor of the film’s choices with her, and I can see their point, but it doesn’t make me less grumpy about Bev becoming, essentially, a damsel in distress. Other than that, I was disappointed that the camaraderie of the Losers’ Club was diminished so much as to be almost nonexistent. The miniseries and novel both had moments that showed that the group were friends who cared for each other beyond just being a junior investigative team. I’m also not sure how I feel about Ben replacing Mike as the historian of the group — I wonder how this will play into the second movie and whether Ben will be the one to take Mike’s role in Chapter Two (trying to avoid spoilers).

I must take a moment to enthusiastically applaud Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. A worthy successor to Tim Curry, and a completely different take on the character. Kudos! Nightmares are almost certainly forthcoming.

I’m pleased with the film. I cringed away from the screen more times than I can count. I was quite literally pushing myself back against the seat in some sort of pathetic attempt to get away from the whole parade of nopes making their way across the screen. This was genuinely terrifying. And that’s a good thing, truly. The filmmakers did a nice job creating Derry and the overall malaise that plagues the town and its residents. The parents were genuinely frightening in their actions and attitudes. The cold, uncaring expressions on the adults as they rode by poor Ben as he was being terrorized by Henry and his thugs was chilling. I liked how the film established that It was able to sway the townspeople in subtle ways. The television program that almost all of the adults were watching, for example, was mostly background noise unless you knew what you were hearing. By the time that Henry was caught up in that influence, though, it was almost too late in the game to truly reveal Derry’s ugly underbelly, but it still worked out.

I liked it. I decided to pick the book back up after years and am casually re-reading it so that I can reacquaint myself with the original tale. I intend to see this again, and soon.

Nancy: Horror movies aren’t really my thing, and I suspect that has a lot to do with the fact that they don’t really scare me. Admittedly, this is kind of odd. I was plenty scared of them as a kid, and as an adult, lots about real life terrifies me (Nuclear holocaust! Super cholera! Our current political discourse!). Still, every now and then, an interesting looking flick — like IT –– will arrive and appear to be worth my attention.

And now, I can happily report that IT is 100% worth yours.

Much of IT‘s success has to do with its talented, insanely young cast and the wonderful chemistry they share with teach other. The seven child actors that make up the main cast absolutely shine here, and this script expects a lot of them. It’s probably why some of the best moments of the movie are the characters just being kids, riffing on each other, dealing with school bullies, and enjoying their summer. Interestingly, there were times when the movie would shift over to the horror elements, and I found myself almost sorry for it, wanting to spend more time on character development.

That’s not to say that the horror aspects aren’t impressive. Each child has at least one creeptastic moment with the monstrous Pennywise, resulting in some truly twisted imagery. I found these scenes to be incredibly effective, filled with great suspense-building and gorgeous lighting. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Bill Skarsgård — who plays Pennywise — is really just effective at being creepy and unnerving, whether its in simple dialogue exchanges or large effects-driven set pieces.

Of course, IT is not free of issues. Perhaps it’s the natural consequence of boiling down even half of a 1,000+ page novel, but the script can feel overstuffed, struggling to give each character the appropriate amount of screen time. Out of the main seven, poor Mike (the “outsider,” home school student, and film’s only major character of color) is the one who gets the shortest end of the stick. And while Bill Skarsgård is a great Pennywise, I weirdly found myself favoring Tim Curry’s more comedic take on the character from the 1990s miniseries.

Despite its flaws, IT is a strong horror offering, with worthwhile performances all around and some great scares. Whether you’re a fan of the book, the miniseries, or are going in completely blind, I suspect you’ll find a lot to enjoy about this Stephen King adaptation. I’m already looking forward to Chapter Two.