IT (2017)

Studio:       Warner Bros.
Director:    Andy Muschietti
Writer:       Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, Gary Dauberman
Producer:  Roy Lee, Dan Lin, Seth Grahame-Smith, David Katzenberg, Barbara Muschietti
Stars:     Jaeden Lieberher, Wyatt Oleff, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Chosen Jacobs, Bill Skarsgard

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Seven friends unite to confront a manifestation of fear that wakes to kill children every 27 years.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

October 1988 – Bill Denbrough helps his little brother Georgie build a paper boat. Georgie takes the boat outside to sail it in rainstorm waters and it falls into a sewer. Appearing as a clown, Pennywise lures Georgie closer to the sewer before biting off Georgie’s arm and pulling him inside.

June 1989 – Mike Hanlon receives a lecture from his grandfather Leroy for hesitating over killing an animal while working on their farm. Mike later experiences a haunting vision of Pennywise while delivering meat into the town of Derry, Maine.

On the last day of school, Beverly Marsh is bullied by her classmate Gretta. Beverly later makes friends with new boy Ben Hanscom, who develops a crush on Beverly.

Bill and his friends Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, and Stanley Uris discuss the recent disappearance of their classmate Betty Ripsom. Henry Bowers and his toadies Patrick Hockstetter, Belch Huggins, and Victor Criss bully the other four boys.

Insistent that Georgie is dead, Bill’s father angrily tells Bill to stop pursuing his theory that the sewer would have washed his brother away to a tract of land known as ‘The Barrens.’

After being scolded by his rabbi father for not studying in preparation for his bar mitzvah, Stan encounters Pennywise in the form of a macabre painting that briefly comes to life.

Ben studies Derry’s history at the library, focusing on a 1908 explosion at the Derry Iron Works that killed 88 children. Ben follows a vision of a red balloon into the library’s basement where he encounters Pennywise as a headless boy.

Henry and his three toadies capture Ben. Henry beats up Ben and carves his initial into Ben’s stomach before Ben is able to flee. Henry’s group chases after Ben.

Bill, Richie, Eddie, and Stan investigate the sewer drain at the Barrens. They find Betty Ripsom’s shoe. Ben runs into the four boys, who bicycle Ben back into town.

Patrick searches for Ben inside the sewer drain. Patrick flees from a vision of zombie women before Pennywise kills him.

While Richie waits outside with Ben, the other three boys go into the drugstore to buy supplies for treating Ben’s wounds. Beverly runs into Bill, Eddie, and Stan in the store. Unable to afford the bandages, Beverly distracts the pharmacist so that the boys can steal the items.

After treating Ben, Bill invites Beverly to join them at the quarry the following day. Beverly returns home to her abusive father and cuts her own hair in frustration.

Bill, Richie, Ben, Eddie, Stan, and Beverly go swimming at the quarry. Afterward, Ben shows everyone his research on Derry’s mysterious history. Ben mentions that the 91 people who founded the town disappeared and the only clue was a trail of bloody clothes leading to the well house.

While walking alone, Eddie encounters Pennywise first as a disfigured hobo and then as a clown outside of an abandoned house on Neibolt Street.

Beverly hears the missing children’s voices coming from her bathroom sink’s drain. Hair from the pipe wraps itself around Beverly as the bathroom explodes in blood that her father is unable to see.

Bill confronts a vision of Pennywise and Georgie in his house’s flooded basement.

Beverly shows Bill, Ben, Eddie, and Stan the blood in her bathroom, confirming that they can see it too. The four boys help Beverly clean the bathroom while Richie keeps lookout outside for Beverly’s father.

Beverly mistakes a secret admirer postcard left for her by Ben as coming from Bill. Ben becomes disheartened by the budding affection between Bill and Beverly.

Bill tells the others that he saw a vision of Georgie with an evil clown. Eddie also admits to seeing the clown.

Beverly, Bill, Ben, Richie, Eddie, and Stan rescue Mike from Henry, Belch, and Victor. A rock war erupts between the two groups.

Over a discussion of the latest missing child, Ben tells the other six Losers’ Club members that his research reveals something emerges to eat Derry children every 27 years. The group concludes that the evil entity is able to take the form of their individual fears.

Overlaid maps reveal that all of the attack sites are connected via sewers that lead to the abandoned Neibolt house, which is where the well house formerly stood. Pennywise emerges from a slide projector screen to terrorize the seven friends.

Hoping to find Georgie, Bill leads everyone to the Neibolt house. Bill, Richie, and Eddie enter and are tormented by various visions. Eddie falls through the upstairs hallway floor and breaks his arm. Beverly and the others rush inside in time to rescue the boys from Pennywise, although Ben’s stomach is slashed in the commotion.

Mrs. Kaspbrak angrily takes Eddie to the hospital. Bill punches Richie as the group becomes divided over whether or not to try killing Pennywise.

August – After his father shames him in front of Belch and Victor, Henry Bowers murders his father with a knife as Pennywise encourages him through the television.

Eddie confronts his mother about turning him into a hypochondriac after learning that his medications are placebos.

Beverly violently fights back when her father tries assaulting her. After she splits her father’s head with a toilet lid, Pennywise abducts Beverly.

Bill rallies the other boys to come with him to the Neibolt house after discovering Beverly was taken. As the boys climb down the well in the basement leading to Pennywise’s lair, Henry interrupts by attacking Mike. To save his own life, Mike pushes Henry into the well. Henry falls to his death.

Pennywise confronts Beverly in a chamber where all of the missing children are floating in the air. Pennywise entrances Beverly, who begins floating too.

Stan is briefly attacked by Pennywise in the guise of the misshapen woman from his father’s painting. Bill wanders off alone when he follows a vision of Georgie.

Ben, Richie, Mike, Eddie, and Stan find Beverly floating and pull her down. Ben kisses Beverly, which breaks her trance.

Bill confronts a vision of Georgie, but shoots him in the head after admitting he isn’t real. Georgie’s corpse transforms into Pennywise. The seven friends fight Pennywise together as it takes on different forms. Realizing that the kids overcame their fear, Pennywise retreats deeper into the sewer in defeat.

The missing children float back down to the ground. Bill finds Georgie’s yellow raincoat. The other six kids comfort Bill as he cries.

September – Beverly tells the six boys about a dream she had of them as adults. Bill makes everyone promise with a blood pact to reunite if Pennywise ever returns. Bill and Beverly share a private goodbye that culminates in them kissing.

---

Click here for Culture Crypt’s review of the sequel, “It Chapter Two.”

Review:

If a film features a monster or a murder, chances are it probably qualifies as a horror movie.  “It” features a monster committing murder, meaning it most definitely fulfills the criteria.  So let’s cut the quibbling over distinctions between psychological thriller, dark drama, fabulist fantasy, or whatever other words one wants to misapply to sidestep calling a fig a fig.  “It” is a horror film in the most traditional sense of the term, and a pretty good one at that.

The setup is relatively simple.  Every 27 years, an otherworldly evil awakens in Derry, Maine to feed on the small town’s children.  This evil takes shape as whatever a person fears, yet appears most often as toothy clown Pennywise.  During the summer of 1989, six bullied boys and one abused girl come together under the commonality of their misfit statuses to drive the deceptive demon out of Derry once and for all.

Despite the straightforward summary, “It” crams in a considerable amount of content.  The screenplay from Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman mounts a monumental effort to condense one of Stephen King’s lengthier novels, the “set in the past” half of it anyway, into a two hour and 15 minute movie.  In general, their script covers all of the broad beat bases.  However, having to adapt so much material means some of the sacrifices show their seams.  Certain characters see side stories marginalized or otherwise juggled in ways that jumble the flow.

As much as the movie can be considered anything, whether one wishes to hail it for its coming of age themes, stylish scares, or something else, “It” is a highlight reel of charming characters, and a few terrifying ones too.  Up for acclaim first is Bill Skarsgard’s performance as the titular evil entity.

Tim Curry’s iconic portrayal of Pennywise in the 1990 “It” TV miniseries ranks right up there with Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger and Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates as being among the most memorable movie villains associated exclusively with one actor.  Those are colossal clown shoes to fill, yet Skarsgard puts his own uniquely eerie punctuation on the personality in the same way that Heath Ledger reinvented the Joker.  Combined with his distinctive wig and wardrobe, Skarsgard builds an unsettling visage primarily through disturbingly expressive behavior, reaffirming Pennywise as the evil clown to end all evil clowns in the process.

Everyone will have his/her personal favorite Losers’ Club member, but Finn Wolfhard’s Richie certainly stands out.  Richie benefits greatly from having the most entertaining dialogue as the Club’s resident comedian.  Yet Wolfhard’s commitment to selling the snark behind those sentences makes his presence more meaningful than empty comic relief.

Impressively, Wolfhard really works to distinguish Richie from Mike Wheeler on “Stranger Things,” even though both properties draw from the same well.  “It” shows that Wolfhard can play similar people in more than one way, an outstanding feat for a young actor still drying the dampness behind his ears.

Likely pinging on fewer radars is Nicholas Hamilton as bad boy Henry Bowers.  With huffing and puffing physicality and white-hot rage burning behind his eyes, Hamilton’s Henry makes for a terrific archetypical movie bully.  It’s easy to overlook him though, because “It” doesn’t use Henry to his full extent.  He is more of a temporary hurdle of inconvenience to occasionally overcome rather than a deep threat to the septet on par with Pennywise.

Similar sentiments apply to someone like Mike Hanlon, whose involvement in the Losers’ Club plays like an “oh yeah, him” inclusion.  Tripping up the movie’s momentum are such sudden jumps to and from nearly a dozen main characters who are far from even in terms of relative weight and screen time.  Several of these moments come across as obligatory, sometimes superfluous, instead of narratively necessary.

But “It” has “it” where it counts most, which is in packaging heartfelt human drama with countless classic creeps including haunted houses, multiple monsters, and severed body part carnage.  Director Andy Muschietti probably puts too much passion into making his movie a sweeping epic, overdosing on CGI and allowing cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung to take visual fluidity to new extremes.  Chung’s camera cannot stop indulging in cranes and dollies whether a scene calls for movement or not.  Obviously, there are far worse crimes than doing too much, though it bears mention that on the technical front, “It” takes itself off any leash of restraint.

“It” plays as its own movie, but does feel like a prequel, which of course it is in a way.  Even though that is true, I cannot recall another instance where end credits rolled and I was instantly filled with anxious anticipation for a follow-up film.  Being able to generate this kind of emotional investment is a testament to how the film succeeds at making viewers care about its characters as well as the world they inhabit.

Review Score:  75

---