Hi, I'm Torstein from Cinema Terror and let's talk about the smash horror movie that everyone
else has already reviewed for the last two weeks, the new adaptation of Stephen King's It
When you talk about a remake or reboot of a movie with such an iconic and beloved character
as Pennywise, then I feel it's only fair to first share your personal feelings towards
the original material.
Even though I grew up as a Stephen King fan, I never actually read the book for It due
to it being so damn large.
I did however watch and rewatch the 1990's miniseries several times over the years and
I enjoy it just as much today as I did back when I was a teenager.
Yeah, it does have some over the top and silly stuff in it, but the characters and the overall
storytelling makes it all come together and work as an entertaining piece.
Since this new version is currently in cinemas, I will keep this as spoiler free as possible.
If you didn't already know, It takes place in the small familiar fictional Stephen King
town of Derry in Maine where an evil entity is tormenting all of the children that lives
there.
The entity can shift shapes after what the fear of the children is, and is otherwise
just comfortable taking the shape of a creepy looking clown.
The children must come together and face their fears in order to end all the torment by taking
the evil clown down once and for all.
This new It version is... ok.
It is worth watching as it does have some good stuff in it, but it is brought down by
too much by feeling too much like a Hollywood product that went through a checklist before
it went into production, poor directorial decisions, not enough character development
and suprisingly enough, several cringeworthy scenes that managed to put me out of the movie.
The miniseries had both a part with the characters as children and one part as adults.
This movie only focus on the childrens part, which makes sense as it gives more time to
the part that most fans of the film enjoy the most and squeezing in both parts in a
two hour long movie would be a bit too much.
But even if the kids only got like 90 minute of running time in the original and over 120
minutes in the new one, they felt more developed in the miniseries.
There are two main reasons for this in my opinion.
The first is the inconsistency of character choices.
Too many times one of the characters would just go on to do something stupid or way out
of character in order to keep the story progressing.
During the ending the same stupid action is done twice by two different characters within
five minutes and neither times it felt natural to the previous behavior of the characters.
That's just poor and cheap screenwriting in my opinion.
It also didn't help that they basically ignored some of the kids.
Mike and Stan could easily have been written out of the movie without it affecting the
end result, even ending up improving the film overall.
The second is the lack of time given to them just being kids.
As soon as ten minutes of screening time pass by where we get to become familiar with them,
they had to just include a scare scene for some reason, probably to make sure that "stupid"
horror fans wouldn't become bored.
Cut a few of those out and give us more chance to bond with the character and feel their
bond towards each other and I might have cared more and became more invested in them and
ignored some of the other stuff I found flawed.
Perhaps it's just the way Hollywood looks at general cinemagoers, I wouldn't know as
I don't watch most new movies, but it nearly feels insulting when you sit in a cinema and
a movie takes a pause from telling a story just to include scare scenes after scare scenes
that are ultimately pointless as they don't do much for the story and hardly brings out
any fright in you, due to them being too slick and overdone with too much CGI.
They are simply there to remind you that you are watching a horror movie and they are the
worst parts of this film.
They also had to overly explain every single thing that was going on and I just hate that.
Ironically enough, the only scene that actually made the young audience I saw it with jump,
is a simple scene where the camera pans to the side and reveals a scary thing.
A simple and easy camera trick that has been used for decades gave the biggest scare in
a film that tries hard to creep you out with big, expensive loud scenes.
In fact, this movie reminded me a lot of another movie that couldn't restrain itself from having
too many CGI scares either, which is the 2013 movie Mama.
I must have totally blacked it out of my mind as I had forgotten that director Andy Muschietti
was in the directors chair for this one as well.
Another huge problem I had with the film is that it felt like it had trouble finding its
tone and keep it consistent for the entire film.
There is a few odd scene transitions that made me wonder what the hell happened.
One example is when the kids get away from a scary event and the very next scene, on
the same location and basically just after the previous events has occurred, a character
enters the picture and is supposed to be funny or something.
It was a very odd transition and the film does have a few other ones like that in it
as well.
I am also not a fan of the current trend of giving nods to the 80's.
They do the retro jerking here as well and they fail at being creative about it, rather
just going for repeating themselves over and over.
On the positive side, I did like the child actors even if I didn't care all that much
for all the choices their characters are made to do.
The ones who get the most screen time all deliver good performances and it is a shame
that there couldn't have been more focus on fleshing them out a bit more.
Finn Wolfhard as Richie has a natural and fun charm to him and even if it does get tiredsome
that he has to deliver comedic lines in basically every single scene he is in, he is still the
star of the film in my book.
While I also thought that Sophia Lillis as Beverly was charming, I would have prefered
it if they had toned down the sexual elements of her character and made her more just one
of the boys.
The friendship bond between them all would be better for me if she wasn't just included
because the boys lusted after her, and before you say anything, yes I know what happens
in the book but from my knowledge that's only one part of her character in it.
And what about Bill Skarsgard who had to tackle the big task of taking over the role of Pennywise
from Tim Curry?
Curry's Pennywise is arguably the best part of the miniseries and frankly the biggest
reason for why most people have fond memories of it, except people like me who genuinly
enjoy the entire miniseries.
Skarsgard did just fine, his Pennywise is not the same as Tim Curry's, which was absolutely
the way to go.
We don't see all that much of him, but whenever he is on the screen he is bringing the character
enough presence to make him creepy.
So the new It, is it worth seeing?
Yeah, I think it is.
Even if I had problems with it, I do believe that this is a horror movie that horror fans
at least should give a chance.
It might be a better film for those who watch a few horror movies a year then the hardcore
horror fan, but we just have to accept that we are not the intended audience for this
30+ million dollar movie either.
It is a movie that can be nitpicked in thousand pieces, but if you are able to ignore glaring
flaws and just enjoy a new, big, shiny and fancy horror film then by all means, have
a blast with it.
For me, I'd rather stay with the original 1990 TV-series, which will still be the version
that I will revisit every other year.
The 2017 version of It gets an average score of 2.5 out of 5.
So what did you think of the new It?
Were you disappointed like I was, or did you have a great time with it like most of the
other people in the world did?
What other Stephen King story would you like to see being brought back to the big screen?
Let me know about it in the comment section below, subscribe if you like this review and
want to keep up with more of my stuff and of course, thank you and have a nice evening.
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