Halloween Shelf: It (2017) - An Off My Shelf Review
I have seen very few horror movies in the theatre. And since everybody in the world thought "It" sounded like a good movie to go see, we thought we'd check it out.
Plot: Children in this town keep disappearing, and it's not just due to the ridiculously evil school bullies. It's up to a ragtag team of misfits with vile vocabularies and terrible parents to figure out the mystery.
We went into this with three potential concerns: "jump-scares" (i.e. the moment when a thing in a movie jumps out and surprises you - hence, makes you jump); the makeup for this darn clown; and the knowledge that I have seen very few really good Stephen King adaptations.
Why do I have a problem with "jump-scares"? Because they are the cheapest possible way to scare your audience. "Argh! Something jumped at me real fast and it made me jump!"
Jump-scare.I saw a quote recently that compared a movie full of jump-scares to a stand-up comedian who goes down into the audience and tickles everyone, then claims to be a good comedian because he succeeded in making everybody laugh. It's pretty much the same thing. There is no sustained sense of horror or terror from the jump-scare experience -- nobody goes home afraid something is going to jump at them real fast. A sustained sense of horror comes from someplace else, a psychological and possibily spiritual place, and the majority of modern horror movies can't figure out where that place is. (I have to assume it's because they are written by completely shallow people.)
The makeup for the clown was also a concern for me, because it was so patently "supposed to be scary"; not unlike the design of the Annabelle doll (does that look like a toy any parent would purchase for a child? NO! Truly scary dolls are dolls that were supposed to be cute or funny but went horribly wrong, and some not-paying-attention parent couldn't see past the failed attempt at cute-funniness and brought the horrible thing home...) Tim Curry's "It" was just an ordinary-looking clown who was made unsettling by the fact of Tim Curry's actual face (that's not an insult; he has a different face). So, what I'm saying is, putting "scary makeup" over a clearly handsome man is much less spooky than putting "benign, whimsical makeup" over a clearly weird-looking man.
See? He doesn't need makeup. Tim Curry just smiling and
stroking a broom like a pervert is scary on its own.My third concern -- the Stephen King adaptation problem. The Stephen King adaptation problem is that sometimes, out of a misguided sense of fealty to the author, people adapting Stephen King stories leave in too much; they put things into the film that might have been scary when you imagined them in the book, but, when translated into film, just plain look silly. Children of the Corn's ending was ruined by a goofy explosion. The Langoliers is ruined by the accurate (if horribly computer-animated) adaptation of the monsters. Christine is just dull. And the original TV movie of It (1990) just plain gets goofy at the end. (No spoilers... but it's not scary at all. I don't know what they're going to do about that in the sequel...)
I'm not saying there are no good Stephen King adaptations, because clearly people respect the movies The Shining and Misery. But you know what both of those movies had? Moments from the books that the filmmakers judiciously chose to leave out. So what would happen with the 2017 version of It? Would it go too far? Would it make all these mistakes?
The 2017 "It"
.... Long story short, I basically enjoyed this movie.
In the first ten minutes, I didn't think I was going to. The first little boy who gets taken by It isn't convincing (i.e. he's not a good actor. When he's laughing he's not convincing, when he's scared he's not convincing). And then we start getting introduced to our "heroes" -- they talk like the vilest of college fratboys. Is that what 12-year old boys talk like? Or, as the case may be, talked like in the 1980's? (Granted, kids in the Stephen King version of childhood always seem to have appallingly filthy vocabularies.) All can say is, I was almost the exact age of the kids in this movie during that period, and I didn't talk like that. Although I was also homeschooled, and not a boy.
Yes, the problem with the clown makeup still stands -- too patently "scary" over a relatively handsomely-built face. And Mr. Hall would have enjoyed him doing more actual clown-capering. Some of my favorite parts of his were when he was just being a jerk to the kids, rather than trying to be outright scary -- because those were the parts where we began to get a sense of the personality of Pennywise the Clown (outside of the "I'm a Scary Clown!" business).
And there ARE jump-scares.
However, the movie isn't just a solid wall of jump-scares, it's not ruined by the makeup, and although the kids start out appalling and unappealing -- they get better. (The vocab remains in the gutter, but the kids become a bit more sympathetic as the film wears on).
The middle of the film does an effective job of working childhood fears.
As the story progresses, the kids go from being shallow representations of vague 1980's culture to actual kids with actual problems -- and we understand why they are scared and sympathize.
Plot: Children in this town keep disappearing, and it's not just due to the ridiculously evil school bullies. It's up to a ragtag team of misfits with vile vocabularies and terrible parents to figure out the mystery.
We went into this with three potential concerns: "jump-scares" (i.e. the moment when a thing in a movie jumps out and surprises you - hence, makes you jump); the makeup for this darn clown; and the knowledge that I have seen very few really good Stephen King adaptations.
Why do I have a problem with "jump-scares"? Because they are the cheapest possible way to scare your audience. "Argh! Something jumped at me real fast and it made me jump!"
Jump-scare.I saw a quote recently that compared a movie full of jump-scares to a stand-up comedian who goes down into the audience and tickles everyone, then claims to be a good comedian because he succeeded in making everybody laugh. It's pretty much the same thing. There is no sustained sense of horror or terror from the jump-scare experience -- nobody goes home afraid something is going to jump at them real fast. A sustained sense of horror comes from someplace else, a psychological and possibily spiritual place, and the majority of modern horror movies can't figure out where that place is. (I have to assume it's because they are written by completely shallow people.)The makeup for the clown was also a concern for me, because it was so patently "supposed to be scary"; not unlike the design of the Annabelle doll (does that look like a toy any parent would purchase for a child? NO! Truly scary dolls are dolls that were supposed to be cute or funny but went horribly wrong, and some not-paying-attention parent couldn't see past the failed attempt at cute-funniness and brought the horrible thing home...) Tim Curry's "It" was just an ordinary-looking clown who was made unsettling by the fact of Tim Curry's actual face (that's not an insult; he has a different face). So, what I'm saying is, putting "scary makeup" over a clearly handsome man is much less spooky than putting "benign, whimsical makeup" over a clearly weird-looking man.
See? He doesn't need makeup. Tim Curry just smiling andstroking a broom like a pervert is scary on its own.My third concern -- the Stephen King adaptation problem. The Stephen King adaptation problem is that sometimes, out of a misguided sense of fealty to the author, people adapting Stephen King stories leave in too much; they put things into the film that might have been scary when you imagined them in the book, but, when translated into film, just plain look silly. Children of the Corn's ending was ruined by a goofy explosion. The Langoliers is ruined by the accurate (if horribly computer-animated) adaptation of the monsters. Christine is just dull. And the original TV movie of It (1990) just plain gets goofy at the end. (No spoilers... but it's not scary at all. I don't know what they're going to do about that in the sequel...)
I'm not saying there are no good Stephen King adaptations, because clearly people respect the movies The Shining and Misery. But you know what both of those movies had? Moments from the books that the filmmakers judiciously chose to leave out. So what would happen with the 2017 version of It? Would it go too far? Would it make all these mistakes?
The 2017 "It"
.... Long story short, I basically enjoyed this movie.
In the first ten minutes, I didn't think I was going to. The first little boy who gets taken by It isn't convincing (i.e. he's not a good actor. When he's laughing he's not convincing, when he's scared he's not convincing). And then we start getting introduced to our "heroes" -- they talk like the vilest of college fratboys. Is that what 12-year old boys talk like? Or, as the case may be, talked like in the 1980's? (Granted, kids in the Stephen King version of childhood always seem to have appallingly filthy vocabularies.) All can say is, I was almost the exact age of the kids in this movie during that period, and I didn't talk like that. Although I was also homeschooled, and not a boy.
Yes, the problem with the clown makeup still stands -- too patently "scary" over a relatively handsomely-built face. And Mr. Hall would have enjoyed him doing more actual clown-capering. Some of my favorite parts of his were when he was just being a jerk to the kids, rather than trying to be outright scary -- because those were the parts where we began to get a sense of the personality of Pennywise the Clown (outside of the "I'm a Scary Clown!" business).
And there ARE jump-scares.
However, the movie isn't just a solid wall of jump-scares, it's not ruined by the makeup, and although the kids start out appalling and unappealing -- they get better. (The vocab remains in the gutter, but the kids become a bit more sympathetic as the film wears on).
The middle of the film does an effective job of working childhood fears.
As the story progresses, the kids go from being shallow representations of vague 1980's culture to actual kids with actual problems -- and we understand why they are scared and sympathize.
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