IT

The 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel IT follows the story of seven kids known as The Losers Club and their quest to stop the murderous clown Pennywise.

Director Andy Muschietti has crafted some nightmare-inducing imagery. Visual and audio clues are aptly and skillfully used to intensify those imagery, with just enough smoke and mirrors to distract the audience.

Right off the bat, the opening sequence of the film introduces us to the evil that haunts the town of Derry. Bill Skarsgård is a nightmare come true as Pennywise the clown. Unfortunately, that spine-chilling dread seems to disappear halfway through the movie. There is not a lot of variety in terms of the tactics employed in the film to induce scare. While the first few jump scares are effective, I can’t help but walk out of the film with a vague sense of disappointment. The film barely taps into the more cerebral aspect of horror, the kind that gets under your skin, that is promised by the first half of the film.

But it might be unfair to judge the film based entirely on how much it scares you because the film really does offer something that deviates itself from the other standard horror films in the barrel. It addresses the limits of using clowns and tricks to unsettle its audience by tying that fear directly to the kids’ home life in the small town. We discover that the problems on their home front, like being hunted by bullies, losing a loved one, being controlled by a pedophiliac parent, are every bit as troubling and horrifying as an imagined clown.

IT is a horror-infused coming of age story that will breathe some fresh air to the genre. But, in all honesty, it’s not as scary as the promotional materials suggest.

(Originally posted on 9 Sep 2017 @projectunwrapped)