Despite breaking box office records, new horror film IT doesn’t deserve the hype
By: Morgan Ratliff
Staff Writer
Against many odds, Andy Muschietti’s IT – Stephen King’s seminal horror novel turned movie– has taken the world by storm, shattering box office records while capturing the devoted attention of fans and critics alike. Truly, the only thing bigger than this movie’s box office take is IT’s forehead.
Despite the relatively strong casting for those prickly, annoying kids, Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Dancing Clown was a main draw for many movie-goers. With everything from yellowy Sith eyes to a copyright infringement on author King’s buck teeth, he’s overtly and intentionally spooky. You know what’s not spooky? An old-school lookin’ clown. You know what’s spooky? An old-school lookin’ clown who happens to be Tim. I’m about as spooked by this iteration of Pennywise the Dancing Clown as I am by Nickeldumb the Leaping Buffoon. IT even speaks less than Bill, who can barely will the words from his mouth, and at times less intelligibly than a certain Western world leader. Although the (in more ways than one) horrific CGI usually spares him from needing dialogue, that doesn’t spare us from the CGI.
And what an ending. Congratulations, you all banded together into a collective state of misplaced fearlessness and from there IT cowered away. In fact, he partially crumbled into floaty space bits before dropping into some well. The kids conclude that IT is most likely dead, but IT only needs to eat every twenty-seven years and we humans generally eat a few times a day. Are they implying that IT will starve because of one poor feeding cycle? IT still got at least three or four kids, so IT had a snack to tide him over. The power of childhood magic may not bind them into adulthood, either – did anybody think to exchange even phone numbers, addresses, or anything? Hence, we wait for the sequel which was announced in an after-credits scene simultaneously unnecessary and downright discouraging. This should’ve been a three-and-a-half-hour-long Watchmen-esque affair. Now we’re stuck in an awkward position of paying to see what is practically the same material twice and we’ve lost out on the parallel, referential structure of the out-of-time narratives present in both the novel and TV miniseries.
All there is to look forward to in the sequel is the further dumbing-down of Mike – they already took away his research-oriented, history-minded self and molded it into some token killer. Muschietti actually announced that Mike will be a junkie using drugs to alter his mind in order to recall the events of the first film instead of, you know, being a meticulous, note-taking librarian with access to all the appropriate documentation to keep his memory fresh. That change is as pointless and stupid as a broken pencil wielded by someone who’s illiterate.
At least in this version we got Bill finding Georgie’s jacket, and the group comforted him in a collective moment of grief. It was a much more tactful form of bonding than them all jouncing (and I ain’t talking jump rope or trampolines) in grey water.
But hell, the kids don’t even remember much of their summer after all is said and done. If the Losers are allowed to suddenly forget this movie, and taking into consideration all of the disastrous filmmaking, then I’m allowed to forget why I ever bothered to pay for this over-hyped movie.
