THERE's TWO THINGS that I’m going
to have to mention reviewing this film. The first is the 1986 Stephen King
mega-novel and the second is the 1990 mini-series adaptation, both of the same
name.
I read the book 15+ years ago, so there won’t be
many comparisons to that here. After seeing the 2017 remake, I dug out my copy
of the mini-series and it’s on as I write this. For the rest of the review, I’ll
refer to the new film as It 2017 and the mini-series as It 1990.
There follows a brief plot synopsis:
All three versions are set in Derry, Maine. Stephen
King fans will be very familiar with Derry (and the fictional town of Castle
Rock) as these are two places that appear over and over again in his work.
A group of young teenage misfits, calling
themselves ‘The Loser Club’ have to band together to defeat a fear-eating
supernatural entity whose favourite visual representation in the real world is
that of Pennywise the dancing clown, who has a mouthful of supernumerary razor
sharp teeth. Here's the thing, though...the entity can manifest itself as
anything at all, anything that you’re frightened of.
The Loser Club
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| The Losers Club: Eddie, Bill, Mike, Stan, Ben, Beverly and Richie |
Bill : is struggling to get over his guilt
over the death of his little brother Georgie. He let Georgie go out and play by
himself when he was supposed to be looking after him. His obsession with
finding out what happened to Georgie alienates him from his father, who cannot
hide his anger and disappointment towards Bill. In the 1990 version, we meet
his mother. She does not appear in the 2017 version.
Ben : is new to town. He’s fat (though
not really by 2017’s standards) he’s fascinated by local history and it’s him
that’s worked out something really bad happens in the town every 27 years. We
don’t know too much about his home life.
Richie: is the comedian of the group, and
provides light relief. He also does a marvellous line in filthy jokes. Again,
we don’t know too much about his home life and have to assume that his parents
are often absent and/or neglectful.
Eddie: is an asthmatic germophobe with a
controlling mother. He’s often very anxious and easily wound up. His mother is
morbidly obese and spends the day watching television game shows.
Stan: is the voice of reason. We don’t
actually see too much of Stan’s backstory, other than his bar mitzvah is
coming up and he hasn’t studied for it. Oh, and he’s haunted by a painting of a
faceless flute player.
Mike: is an orphan in this version (not in
the 1990 one) He’s black, so that automatically outcasts him and makes him the
focus of negative attention from Henry Bowers and his sidekicks. He works for
the family meatpacking business, a job he struggles with because he can’t bear
to slaughter the animals.
Beverly: is the
only girl in the group. She is the victim
off false rumours about her promiscuity. Her dad is sexually abusive, and this
is made far more explicit here than it is in 1990 version.
The 1990 version begins with Mike realising that ‘It’ has returned to Derry after a young girl
goes missing. Mike phones Bill, and we have a fade-out flashback flash-back to
what happened to Georgie in the summer of 1960.
Each version handles Georgie’s death very
differently, though what actually happens is identical. The paper boat Georgie
and Bill make together is swept into a storm drain. Waiting in the drain is
Pennywise. It 1990 gets this scene out of the way quickly – it’s there purely
to introduce Pennywise to the audience. It’s also oddly accompanied with
weirdly jolly plinky-plonky music. It 2017 spends much longer setting up,
firstly in establishing the sweet, close relationship between the two brothers
and secondly in holding tension for what’s to come next. We know what’s going
to happen to Georgie, and when it does, it’s brutal. His interaction with
Pennywise is much longer, and it feels much, much more uncomfortable; Pennywise has water
running in and out of his mouth. And he just…lets it run. He doesn’t wipe his
mouth or lick his lips. I found that more unsettling than his bright, bright
blue eyes. This is an alpha predator on the hunt and his
focus on getting Georgie is absolute.
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| 'Hiya Georgie!' |
Pennywise is played by Swedish actor Bill
Skarsgård, and he’s pretty fucking scary. He has a child-like quality to him,
but because he’s obviously very tall, his physicality, the sheer size of him
over that of the kids alone, makes him frightening. The way he moves is freaky;
his slightly off-kilter eyes are freaky; his sly little smile is freaky; even
his grubby, Victorian vaudeville era costume is damned creepy.
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| Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise |
It 2017
dispenses with the adult sections of the narrative altogether, staying
with the children first in the autumn of
1988 when Georgie dies, and then in the summer 1989, instead of time hopping back and forth like
the novel and It 1990 does. This is actually a pretty good way to handle the
bloated source material because it nicely lines up part two, and means that
this part of the story can fully focus on the kids and their lives in 1989.
The child actors in It 2017 are all superb, and
totally believable. There is not one dud performance (and it does feel mean to
slate a kid’s acting) Richie, Eddie and Ben provide the comic relief from what
would otherwise be a relentless misery fest. And they talk like kids really do;
they swear, they take the piss, they tell sexually explicit jokes. Their
friendship feels very real. The only girl in the group Beverly, seems older,
taller, bigger and more mature than the boys and that’s because in real life,
she would be. We first meet 2017 Beverly hiding (unsuccessfully) in the loos from
the school bullies. Beverly is actually one of the most complex, and well-drawn
characters in this film. She has an utterly miserable home life, but her ‘public’
face is one of sass and bravado.
Each child is facing their own personal fear (and
this is what Pennywise manifests as) Beating demons is a reoccurring theme in
King’s work. IT 2017 knows this, and puts this theme at the heart of the film. This actually ties in nicely with the coming of age feel that the film also has, and the idea that our childhood fears may always haunt us. I read, watched and listened to other reviews, and it didn’t surprise me to
hear comparisons of It 2017 to films like The
Goonies and that isn't a bad thing at all. There is an element of adventure to this film too, and it doesn't feel out of place.
Like with a lot of King’s novels, there are plenty
of Easter eggs to be found. Eddie wears a t-shirt that has a picture of a car
with eyes and teeth on it (Christine), Beverly’s bathroom scene recalls
both Carrie and The Shining. The actor playing
vile bully Henry Bowers has more than a passing resemblance to the late River
Phoenix, who starred in another Stephen King adaptation, Stand By Me.
One of the boys calls Beverly ‘Molly Ringwald’ which is funny because she looks
just like 80’s Molly Ringwald (though that joke went over ¾ of the audience’s
heads in my showing.) When TVs are playing in the background in scenes, you can
hear the audio talk about playing in sewers with clowns. A cinema is showing A Nightmare on Elm Street 5.
The ‘deadlights’
from the novel don’t appear until the end of the film, but I was so pleased
they did. In the car on the way home, I said to my friend, ‘they did the
deadlights!! THE DEADLIGHTS!!!’
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| Eddie's Christine inspired t-shirt |
With the exception of Tim Curry's performance as
Pennywise, IT 2017 is superior to IT 1990 in pretty much every way. It’s unnecessary
to compare Curry and Skarsgård, because they are both so different
and frightening in their own ways. That said I do prefer Skarsgård’s
interpretation.
Not one scene is wasted and each one contributes to keeping the plot moving along nicely. You can’t root for characters you don’t care about, but we feel like we’re part of the Loser Club, so we root for them every step of the way. There are moments in this film that are heart-breaking – Bill’s confrontation with his dad in the garage feels so painfully real, it kind of hurts to watch. That said, the film is also actually very, very funny with a good few laugh out loud moments.
For those of us that came of age in the early
1990s, this film will feel especially nostalgic – we can remember the late 80’s
elements of the film – the faulty Casio calculator watch that goes off at weird
times, the huge unflattering NHS style glasses, shell suits, analogue TV, beat
em’ up arcade games – and we can also remember the first time we watched It
1990.
My only issue with the film was the amount of CGI
used. It’s all pretty seamless, so it’s not an issue with quality, but more
that some of the scenes were scary enough without all the extra bows and there
were some genuine ‘hide behind you hands’ frights. I went for dinner after the film, and walking
alone up two flights of stairs to the restaurant toilets spooked me. And that
to me is when a scary film has done its job well. When I’m thinking about it
the next day, and well into the next week.
Scores on the doors:
9/10.
Dishonourable mention:
That scene from the book is cut from both screen adaptations
and thank fuck it is. It’s way too twisted, even for me. Don’t know what scene
I mean? Read the book, friends. Read the book. 