Guilty Pleasures #49 - IT (2017) (A Strange Halloween)

A scary clown in a sinister town
Unfurls a truly dangerous world
Kids must fight, or death by fright
As if on cue, it begins anew

Now a reboot takes the stage
IT again released from its cage
Scary and funny and all things between?
The time approaches: A Strange Halloween.

OK, so what happens when you take half of book and this time give it an actual budget, well let’s find out as we conclude our ITrospective

And when I say budget, it’s not exactly high at only $35m, which it far exceeded with a $700m haul at the box office. Damn that’s good! It’s also been lauded critically with 85% of critics and 84% of audiences liking it, according to Rotten Tomatoes. With average ratings of 7.2/10 and 4.2/5 respectively.

Be aware that I will be comparing it to the miniseries during this review. I only know minor details about how it goes down in the book, so I won’t be using it as a point of reference, let’s dive in.

It’s the town of Derry, Maine and we open at the house of Bill, and we see him folding the paper to create a boat for his brother, Georgie. And we see pretty much instantly that they changed the date to make this set in the 80s, partly to cash in on 80s nostalgia and partly so the sequel can take place in modern times. Georgie is sent to get some wax in the cellar and it’s dark and ‘scary…’ Look, the scene with Georgie and the clown is pretty famous at this point, we know he’s not gonna die here.

He gets the wax, and runs back off. Georgie is unnaturally clingy to his brother, especially since he’s ill. Georgie heads out in a much more realistic interpretation of a rainy day. And that boat goes really fast too, it heads down a storm drain and Georgie is worried about Bill’s reaction to it. Would’ve been good if Bill had asked him to look after it or something that implied that Bill might be upset if it were lost. Also, it’s a sheet of f*cking paper with some wax on it!

He looks inside the drain and is immediately frightened away by Pennywise. I mean he talks he talks to the creepy as hell looking clown for some reason. A woman comes out of the house and sees what’s happening, and immediately heads back inside. After some weird bits of dialogue, Georgie reaches out for the boat and has his arm bitten off, he tries to crawl away. He bit off your hand, not your legs, get up! Anyway, he’s dragged into the sewer, leaving only his blood on the street.

We cut to June, about 9 months later and to a farm, where we’re introduced to Mike, his grandparents run a farm, and he hesitates to shoot a sheep, much to their ire. We never see these people again. I guess that’s more backstory than Mike ever got in the miniseries, come to think of it. 

School’s out for summer and we’re introduced to start of the Loser’s club. Bill, of course; the token hypochondriac, Eddie, the token jew, Stanley and the token comic relief, Richie, played by Finn Wolfhard off Stranger Things, it really is a strange Halloween. They’re talking about what’s to happen in Stan’s upcoming Bar-Mitzvah

They pass by the bullies, but before we get to them, here’s a random girl bully, storming into the bathroom as her bully friends have found our token girl, Beverly. For reasons of… reasons they think Beverly’s slept with half the guys in the school or something, and cover her in watered down trash. I find this scene rather confusing, and I’ll explain why later.

More disappearances have occurred since October, with another happening recently. The mother of the child is at the school, hoping to see him come out. Because of this, there’s a 7pm curfew. They encounter Bowers and his bully friends again, they’d given Bill a free pass this year because of his brother but that’s over and they promise this summer is gonna be a ‘hurt train.’

So Ben is our token fat kid, he’s getting out his bike and Beverly is rude to him. Bev knows that Henry is looking for him, and warns him to keep away from the west entrance. So lame joke: Ben is the new kid on the block, and he’s listening to New Kids on the Block. Ha ha-ha ha, moving on.

Bill gets home and finds his dad in the garage, who’s not happy about finding a sewer replica; Bill’s intending to find Georgie and is semi-convinced he’s still alive. Dude, it’s been 9 months! So, back to Mike as he heads into the town on his bike. He sees Bowers and hides in an alley. A back entrance to a butchers starts shaking, Mike sees some dead looking hands coming around the side and we’re introduced to a common problem, the music.

They at least try and make this scene subtle, but the music kicks in too early and telegraphs the scare, so when the music dies down it’s obvious that Henry and his gang are about to pass by. And that’s the last we’ll be seeing of Mike for a while.

Stan is practising his speech for the Bar Mitzva, his father is a rabbi and not impressed with his skills. There’s no real reason for this but Stan has barely anything else to do in this movie, so I guess this is something. He passes a creepy painting, which falls over as he places the book back. The lights start flickering, the music kicks in way too loud and you know a scare is coming, yeah the painting has come to life and it’s honestly a decent looking effect. Something which won’t always be the case

So, Eddie’s mother being quietly creepy, is one of the scarier things in the film. The loser’s club meet up again and ride out. Ben writes his love letter to Beverly. He’s in the library, researching something or another and sees reports of various disasters, the music begins ramping up so obviously a scare is coming as he sees a head in a tree. A balloon floats nearby, luring Ben to a painted egg, he finds several of them as heads to the library’s archive, the lights begin flickering and he sees a headless figure who gives chase. Again, it’s a decent effect although I feel the Pennywise reveal wasn’t necessary here, it kinda ruined it.

He heads out of the library but just at the wrong time as he’s spotted by Henry Bowers. They take him to a fence and you see how psychotic they are, a car passes by but they ignore him and a balloon is seen in the back. Henry gets to carve at least the first letter of his name in the Ben’s stomach before he manages to escape. The bullies give chase but Henry’s slowed down when he realises he’s lost his knife. Ben reaches the river, and the remaining 2 bullies split up to find him.

The losers’ club are at the sewer tunnel. Eddie refuses to enter because of the sewer water and Stan doesn’t enter because… They find a shoe and it belongs to one of the missing kids. After this discovery, Eddie still refuses to enter because no he might go missing too and Stan refuses to enter because it’s summer and… I think, that’s all they got. Before the conversation can go anywhere, Ben arrives and they have to tend to him.

One of the bullies stumbles across a sewer pipe. He has a spray can and a lighter. Apparently, his name’s Patrick and he encounters the zombies of the missing kids. He runs but of course is disarmed of his flame jet and backed into a corner, a balloon floats towards him and Pennywise appears and shaky-cam’s him to death.

So, the Losers’ club take Ben back to the town and head to the pharmacy to get stuff to patch him up, rather than to a hospital for some reason. They can’t afford much, Eddie has an account with them, but if his mother found out what he’d bought, he’d be in hospital for the rest of the summer. Bev is there too, buying tampons, she avoids the other bully and runs straight into the losers’ club, they tell her of the situation and she distracts the pharmacist by flirting with him? Playing into that reputation, I see.

Eddie fixes the wound as Bill gets to see Bev again, only this time with romantic music and slow motion. Yeah, the two have already met so it’s too late to have the ‘love at first sight’ gimmick. She sees it’s Ben they’re tending to and goes to check on him. Bill invites her to the quarry, and now we hear a little more about Bev’s flirtatious side, and she was ‘friends’ with Bowers in 3^rd grade, and they kissed in the school play. This is what started the rumours about her… yeah, I’m still confused.

Bev heads back home and runs straight into her father, who again is creepier than almost all the Pennywise scares. Scared witless, but also angry, she cuts her hair with a pair of scissors. Cut to the quarry where the boys, all in white loin cloths are spitting into the lake. Bev arrives, showing off her new haircut and dives into the lake, with the boys following. They have a fun time, more fun than building a dam I’m sure, but again the music is a little over the top.

So, the boys are drying off, all watching Bev sunbathe. After getting bored, they turn their attention to Ben’s bag and find his history project. Bill is about to ask about Bev’s sudden haircut but Ben interjects, and yes it’s a bit of a love triangle. He mentions that people die or disappear at 6 times the national average here, and that’s just adults, it’s much worse with kids. Funny, I’ve never seen a story about a disappearing adult.

They head out to Ben’s house and they see he has done a bunch of research about these disappearances. Also, Bev uncovers a New Kids on the Block poster. Time for Eddie to encounter Pennywise. He passes by a creepy burnt-down house, the door opens and he hears a growling voice calling out to him. Eddie walks away but drops his medicine box, the last pill is picked up by someone, a leper, and it’s really, really not that scary. But it scares Eddie enough that he’s backed up against a fence and is faced with Pennywise.

Bev comes home and finds the card from Ben slipped into her bag. She locks herself in the bathroom to read it and is clearly touched by it. She hears voices in the sink, Bev sees that her father is still asleep and runs a tape measure down the drain till she hits something, blood attached to strands of hair. It could be hers but it’s the wrong colour, it tries to drag her in, she screams for help and an explosion of blood covers the bathroom instead. She cowers in the corner crying as her father walks in (the bathroom isn’t locked now?) and sees nothing except her haircut, which he says is too masculine.

There’s a drip in Billy’s room, he heads to get a bucket but is drawn by a light to Georgie’s room. He mourns his brother briefly before a shadow and footprints draws him away, into the creepy basement from before. The basement seems completely flooded, he saw Georgie in the corner, but Pennywise is pretty bad at keeping up the act, so he reveals himself as a puppeteer and has a really bad looking run effect as he tries to chase Bill

Bev calls the boys over the next morning, Richie is volunteered to keep watch as the others see the bathroom and all the blood. They begin clearing it up with an 80's song playing in the background. It’s a bit odd, I can’t deny. Ben sees that she got his love poem but is disappointed to find her still talking to Bill. Bev tells that she was only ever kissed by one guy, during the play, but quickly cottons on to the fact that Bill did not write that poem.

On their way to… somewhere, Bill confesses that he saw Pennywise, and the others all seem to cotton on except for Richie. And we’re past the 1-hour mark now, time for Mike to finally reappear, and he’s been caught by Henry and co, Mike can see Pennywise waving dead arms in the background. They’re about to clock his head in with a rock, but Bev hits him in the head and time for a rock fight, all set to rock music… what? Bowers is left alone and eventually backs off himself.

So, back to Pennywise, it seems he comes every 27 years and feeds for a full year, which means the sequel is likely to take place in 2016. Just before real life in the US went to hell, cool. And whilst Mike doesn’t get a lot of development in this, we do find out a little more about his backstory. He was in a house that burned down, his parents died in the fire. And it turns out that Richie is afraid of clowns. I guess it’s an obvious one, and makes more sense than the werewolf bullsh*t.

To Bill’s garage and we see that all the attacks are linked by the sewers, all of which converge at the house where Eddie saw his leper, Eddie begins to panic and not helping is that the projector seems to be operating on its own, Pennywise is in the photo. Mike knocks over the projector, which seems to work until Pennywise comes out, giant and they can only see him when there’s light. They open the garage door and Pennywise is gone.

Bill proposes they head to the house and confront Pennywise, also believing that’s where Georgie is. Bill heads there on his own but the others try and stop him. I’ll give this to the movie, his motivation is actually one of best bits of character work I’ve seen in a while, certainly deeper than anything in the mini-series. Bill, Richie and Eddie head into the house. Richie finds a missing poster with his own face on it and goes into a panic. This is a side you do not see with him on Stranger Things.

Bill manages to calm him down and they hear a girl calling for help, they head upstairs and Eddie starts to hear the leper, which means he falls behind the others. A door splits the group up, Eddie falls through a hole onto a table. As Bill struggles to open the door, Richie is called away by another voice. Bill and Richie and separated and Richie sees clowns everywhere.

There’s a lot of stuff that would remind you of a haunted house. Eddie wakes up and finds his arm broken. Pennywise crawls out of the fridge to scare him further as gunk threatens to consume the others, they have a choice of 3 doors, and find the body of one of missing people missing its lower half behind the door marked ‘not scary.’ Just as Pennywise is about to make a move, Bev stabs It through the head with something. It doesn’t seem to harm him though, It strike’s Ben’s wound, injuring him further as they try and get Eddie up so they can leave. It retreats and Bill sees It head down the well.

Eddie’s mother is none too pleased, going as far as to call them all monsters and saying he’s done with them. She is an intimidating woman, much more so than the one in the mini-series, although the fat suit is a bit much. So, it’s exactly that point in the movie where our heroes reach their lowest points, so when Bill suggests going back, none of them are happy about it. Bev is the only one who sticks by Bill’s side, it leads to an altercation that leads to Richie getting punched. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine, he didn’t even feel the rock to the head from earlier.  

Mike’s reasons for leaving are dumb, although I totally understand it with the others. Time for a sad song and a montage. Stan has his bar mitzvah and only Richie seems to be there to watch, Mike is now capable of killing a sheep… OK… Ben continues his reading at the library. OK, we cut to Henry bowers, who’s target practice is interrupted when his father, who’s a cop, catches him in the act. Then shoots his feet to show the others how scared he is.

Eddie heads to the pharmacy to pick up his pills and a random woman tells him everything is a placebo. I mean she’s right but… she’s also a random asshole we’ve never seen before, or she might be that girl who was bullying Bev, which makes it even worse. Henry sees a red balloon attached to his mailbox, he finds a parcel inside that contains the knife he lost back earlier. He heads into his house and finds his dad asleep and the TV chanting at him to kill him, and he does so, then the TV chants ‘kill them all’

Back to Bev and his extremely creepy father, he’s found the poem and I feel it’s implied here at least that he…

“Did you tell them that you’re my…”

Holy sh*t! I’m pretty sure is isn’t ‘child’, ‘daughter’ or even ‘little girl’ that fills that blank. She hits him over the head with a sink, and he’s bleeding, but alive, which is more than he deserves but right as she can celebrate her victory, Pennywise grabs her. Great a damsel in distress, that’s not a cliché at all. Bill was intending to meet her but, upon her non-arrival, heads to her house, he finds a message saying ‘you’ll die if you try’ he quickly finds Richie and tells him what happened and I guess all is forgiven?

Eddie gets a call next but before he can leave he has to confront his mother. Despite being physically imposing she doesn’t really pose much of a physical challenge, he just weaves around her. I guess the others just came anyway, and Mike this time comes armed, I think that’s a first in IT. It’s also a rather quick turnaround, although that does give an opening for flashbacks in the sequel. The boys all enter the house as Henry Bowers watches from the side. Stan is reluctant to enter but Bill points out how much stronger they were together and how not being picked off is a good thing.

They make it to the well and prepare a rope so they can climb down, and we cut back to Bev. She wakes up, still weak from it all, she looks up and sees all the bodies floating in the air. I’ll explain my thoughts on this in a minute, then comes the funniest thing I’ve ever seen Pennywise do, but not intentionally funny like with the mini-series as he does his performance dance. He opens his mouth and shows his deadlights, I guess.

Mike is forced confront Bowers on his own, Mike manages to defeat him by pushing him into the well, but after reloading his bolt gun, loses the rest of his ammo. He has 1 shot. Stan hears Beverly calling to him and has somehow split away from the others, the others soon notice and go after him, only barely rescuing him as Pennywise was about to feed. It’s likely this is the moment he looked into the deadlights and it will lead to his suicide in the next movie. Bill sees Georgie and follows him, not taking his own bloody advice and sticking with the group.

Bill finds Beverly, but isn’t tall enough to get her down, he sees Georgie again and promises to come back for her. The others find Bev too and manages to pull her down but she’s still in an entranced state, Ben kisses her and that seems to wake her up... hahahahahahaha, and now she realises it was him who wrote the poem

Bill and Georgie converse and it’s honestly heartfelt as Bill heads up to him and shoots him with Mike’s gun square in the head, finally accepting the death of his brother. Would’ve been awkward if it was real. Of course, it turns out to be Pennywise and it leads to a fight scene. Bill ends up in Pennywise’s grasp, he offers them a chance to turn back. He’ll take Billy, and leave the others alone.

Of course, they don’t and use the most effective method of stopping this deeply psychological villain, beating the ever-loving sh*t out of IT. IT falls down another tunnel, seemingly dying. Bill and Bev hug. The bodies start coming down and here’s one of the stranger parts. In the mini-series and apparently in the book, floating is referring to the bodies floating in the water, whereas here the bodies float in the air. I have 2 counterpoints to this. The first being that Maine doesn’t seem to have very deep sewers, even if we did see bodies floating it wouldn’t be all that impressive. Second, and this is honestly my better argument, THE BALLOONS! They float like balloons

Bill finds Georgie’s coat and cries as the others go to comfort him. Outside, Bev says she had a vision whilst she was under of them being back in the sewer, but as adults, she can’t remember why only that they felt scared. Billy asks the others to swear that if IT isn’t dead, they’ll come back, and they do it with cuts from a piece of glass, a blood oath as it were. The group part company until it’s just Bill and Bev. Bev is heading out to Portland to stay with her aunt. Bill gives her a kiss goodbye. And it seems like it’s Bill she’s chosen over Ben… for now…

So that was IT chapter 1.  And it’s a really good movie

When it comes to character work, it far outshines the efforts of the miniseries, giving Stan and Mike some semblance of backstory, making Eddie’s mother and Bev’s father more intimidating, giving some insight to Henry’s way of thinking and shining a real spotlight on Bill’s character and him going through the grief of losing his brother. This was barely touched upon in the mini-series, not to say there was no character work there but it’s minor compared to this.

Just having Eddie and Bev properly confronting their relatives is something that was never there in the mini-series. That said it’s not perfect, whilst we see Ben’s room, his family and relationships there aren’t explored at all in this movie. Stan and Mike get the back seat when it comes to development, with Mike disappearing for over half an hour.

Finn Wolfhard is clearly having a blast playing Richie, his character arc is about being cowardly and learning to be brave, something that never really occurred in the miniseries. It’s also interesting that he was the last of the group to see Pennywise, and his fear of clowns makes that make a decent amount of sense. The kids all showed their acting potential here, the dynamic between them was believable and carried a sense of fun whilst not entirely distracting from the overall themes.

The movie does have some great ideas when it comes to horror, its CG is relatively decent given the budget the movie had, and the way they use the balloons is effective, much more so than the mini-series. However, the scares are telegraphed too much by the music, and a lot of them aren’t as creepy as you’d think given what I’d just said.

Pennywise himself is a bit of a problem. The guy playing him needed to differentiate himself from Tim Curry’s take, and the production team knew this too. Given the more 'serious?' tone they were going for, it makes some degree of sense to make Pennywise a more threatening foe. The problem is now there’s little to draw people in, aside from that weird dance, Pennywise never demonstrated being a legitimate clown. We’ll see if the next movie changes that, but given what I’ve seen, I have my doubts.

Rating -50%