It: Chapter One
starring Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Nicholas Hamilton, Jackson Robert Scott and Bill Skarsgård
screenplay by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, Gary Dauberman
directed by Andy Muschietti
Rating: ♦♦♦♦◊
Based on Stephen King’s horror novel (1986), It is a re-make of the 1990 TV miniseries (not the 1927 movie starring Clara Bow) based on the same book, starring Richard Thomas and others. This 2017 version is much better than the 1990 version. It’s really scary, but the fact remains that King’s demonic clown motif is really annoying. That’s because Stephen King is a really annoying cow who writes like a precocious high schooler; one of the worst English-language authors I’ve ever read. And this moron is a great success with his stupid, over-long stories that aren’t the least bit scary? Humbug!
The problem for me is the manner in which Kng tries to tell a human drama set against some kind of horror as the background context. It doesn’t work for me. I like drama as a genre. I don’t like horror or science fiction because those genres are usually written so badly. I don’t go so much for mixing genres. And, as I’ve written before, I absolutely detest movies based on comic books, i.e. superhero movies.
Having said that, though, this version of It was scary. I usually don’t go for horror movies, but since I knew a re-make was done I looked forward to seeing it, and I wasn’t disappointed. Set in 1988/89 in the small town of Derry, It follows the story of a group of young high school kids on summer vacation as they are terrorized by an entity (an “It” thing) that exploits the fears and phobias of its victims to disguise itself while hunting its prey. It appears in 27-year intervals in the form of a clown to attract its preferred prey of young children. In the 1990 miniseries Pennywise the Dancing Clown was played by Tim Curry. In this new version he is played by Bill Skarsgård (son of Stellan Skarsgård). The high school kids are collectively known as The Losers Club because they are all geeks in one way or another, so It is a story of how the geeks saved the town.
It is a story of how the geeks saved the town.
I’m not a big fan of clowns because they’re annoying. King’s use of a clown is just stupid and un-scary. Many see clowns as childhood fun, but many others consider them scary and even downright sinister. When did this happen? Coincidentally, on Monday, March 26, 2018 I read a syndicated story from the Associated Press in The Japan Times print newspaper, “When did clowns become scary? In the 1980s, or in the distant past?” which referenced the movie It. Unsurprisingly, scholarly opinion is split on the matter. There is agreement, though, that Stephen King did not invent the evil clown. He only took advantage of it.
I was interested in the fact that principal photography began in the Riverside neighborhood of Toronto (in the summer of 2016). I’m interested in American movies filmed at Canadian locations, because it motivates me to search for things I recognize - like the Toronto City Hall in Biohazard/ Resident Evil (2002, with Milla Jovovich), or the World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto in Short Circuit (1986, with Ally Sheedy), or various locations in Guelph and Elora that appeared in An American Christmas Carol (1979, with Henry Winkler), or the mothballed Guelph Reformatory in Gridlocked (2016, with Danny Glover), some parts of Rockwood recognizable in Agnes of God (1985, with Jane Fonda), and various Vancouver sites recognizable in The X-Files TV series (1993-2002). There are dozens of such movies if one is interested in making a list. Come to think of it, lists are probably available on the internet. I mean, if I can think of it, then someone else has certainly thought of it before me. Other Ontario locations used in It include Port Hope and Oshawa, both east of Toronto. That especially interested me because I know people who live in the small city of Port Hope, on the shore of Lake Ontario, population 16,000.