It (2017) Review

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Story time!!!

Over the summer at my job, I worked with a guy who is a great friend of mine. Both of us love horror movies, and so whenever we got the chance we would talk about good horror movies, bad horror movies, and upcoming horror movies. Well whenever we talked, the conversation always came around to It. It was going to come out in September, he already bought tickets to the premiere, he said that it was on track to be the highest grossing horror movie of all time, and that this movie was going to be part one in a duology that fully adapted the original novel. And whenever he told me that it was going to be one of the biggest movies of the year, I shrugged and kept saying "We'll just have to wait and see."

Well, I waited and I saw it, and all I can say is that he was 100% right about It doing well. Not only has it shattered box office records, but with Halloween on the way, it looks like it can keep doing incredibly well until then and possibly rank as the highest grossing horror movie of all time. But box office gross is one thing. A lot of terrible movies have made an obscene amount of money in theatres. Transformers, Spider-Man 3, Signs, the Star Wars prequel trilogy have all done well, but people wouldn't call them good movies. It? I can say, without a shadow of a doubt that It is actually horrifying, thematically rich, hilarious, creepy, dramatic, and everything that I would ever look for in a horror movie.

It tells the story of a group of friends called the Losers that live in the small town of Derry, Maine. Summer vacation just started, and while most of them plan on just having a fun summer vacation, one of the kids, Bill, is intent of solving the mystery of what happened to his dead brother Georgie. A few years ago, Georgie disappeared into the sewers during a rain storm, so Bill is holding out hope that Georgie survived. But as the mystery goes deeper, they meet a terrifying clown named Pennywise that can screw with their minds, causes their nightmares to become real, and is pretty much going to make their life a living hell unless they do something about him and put an end to his murderous rampage.

So I'm not really all that big of a Stephen King fan to be perfectly honest, as this is coming from someone that has read a few of his books and seen a couple of his movies. I know a lot of people like to throw out his use of tropes as a reason why they don't like his stories, but to me, Stephen King can never stick the landing when it comes to his stories. The first half is usually fantastic, but as you get further and further into his stories, everything just kind of falls apart because he either needs to give his characters a happy ending (see the original It miniseries, Tommyknockers, and his version of The Shining), or because he just doesn't know how to end his stories so he rushes to a conclusion (too many to reference).

It still has all of the Stephen King tropes in it, like taking place in Maine, a one dimensional bully, an alcoholic father, etc., but it sidesteps the poor ending by adapting only the first half of a 1,000 page book. The miniseries tried to tell this huge overarching story in 2 hours, but in the remake, we have far less to adapt with more time to flesh it out. It's kind of perfect in that way.

What's also perfect is Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise. If we're being honest with ourselves, Pennywise isn't that hard to make a terrifying villain. He already looks creepy, says disturbing things, and frequently does things designed to unnerve people. Yet despite all of that, Skarsgard makes Pennywise a genuine monsters, moving in inhumane ways, talking like a creature that barely understands English, and sporting some CG that makes Pennywise all the more monstrous.

Pennywise does steal the show here, but the children actors all do a fine job too. I honestly don't know any of them minus the kid from Stranger Things, but they all seem charming and provide their own unique voice into the movie. Granted, I always called them by their shtick, like the Fat kid, the Squeamish kid, and the Jewish kid, but I never hated any of them. It's just that their personalities were overwritten by their defining feature.

If I didn't make this clear enough, let me just say that It is a scary movie. And I don't mean that it uses horror elements to tell a story, or is riddled with jump scares to make people think it's scary. I mean that there's tension in scenes, you're going to cover your eyes, and there will be moments where you may or may not scream at what's happening in front of you. It's nothing that's going to stick with you for a while, unless you have a fear of clowns, and if that's the case then you're insane for trying to see It, but it's good horror and not popcorn horror.

Popcorn horror are those countless legions of "scary" movies that come out and have people screaming in the movie's trailer, is made up almost entirely of found footage, and likes to use jump scares as the main way of scaring the audience. I don't need to give you examples, because chances are you know exactly what I'm talking about. It isn't re-defying horror films, but the movie doesn't need to. It is a movie that just wants to scare you and have a good time doing it, and it's kind of admirable in a way. It's not being ambitious, but because of that it's one of the most successful horror movies of all time because of how open and accessible it is, yet still incredibly polished.

I remember scenes from the movie like the slideshow, Pennywise talking to Georgie in the sewers, and the bloody bathroom because they were just strong moments that are structured beautifully. In all honesty, I would probably describe It as the Mad Max: Fury Road of horror movies. They'll both perfect distillations of their genre that can be analyzed to figure out why they work so well. And audiences are responding accordingly to it, flocking out like never before to be scared out of their pants.

Plus the ending here works so well because there actually is a definitive ending. I won't spoil it and what it means for the sequel, but if this was going to be the end of the story and there was never going to be a Chapter 2, then I would still be incredibly satisfied with how it ended. Maybe the movie is a bit too long for its own good though? I mean, it is over 2 hours and it take a while for the real scares to start trucking too, but that's really all I can offer as a criticism, and that's a nitpick at most.

If there's one thing that It does better than any other horror movie this year, it's that it'll make you remember it. You're not going to forget Pennywise anytime soon or any of the unsettling things he's done to the kids. It has a way of staying with you after watching it, and I'm just going to tell you to go see It. Just go. It's Fall, Halloween is starting to come into people's minds, and you deserve to go scare yourself in a movie theatre this year.

It's actually kind of funny for me since for every month in 2017, I keep on saying to myself "Well damn, this is probably going to be one of the best movies of the year." And it just keeps happening again, and again, and again. It is what you get when you take a great monster and just update it for the 21st century. Now, I don't expect It: Chapter 2 to be nearly as good as this movie (long story short, giant turtles, giant spiders, and revelations about the town make the ending of the book a textbook Stephen King ending), but nothing that the inevitable sequel can do can tarnish the legacy of this movie. I loved it, and it's the perfect movie for this time of year.