Review: IT
By William Pattison for Horror Bob’s Blog
Gore and Scares! Yes, I know you’ve probably read so many
reviews of the mega blockbuster, which has become the biggest grossing horror
film ever, film adaptation of the first half of Stephen King’s novel IT.
Ok, since you’ve been through this so many times, IT tells
the story of the small town of Derry, which has a horrid history of mayhem
every twenty-six years. The reason for this? An evil thing that can only be
called IT has nested there and has been feeding on the fears and flesh of the
town during its feeding season. This
thing loves to take the form of a demonic clown called Pennywise. A bunch of
the “loser” kids in the town have noticed IT’s pattern and one of the kids, who
lost his little brother to IT has vowed to stop it.
Now I have to admit I was a huge fan of the mini series of
IT that came out in 1990 with Tim Curry playing Pennywise, but I was willing to
give this adaptation a try. I have to admit I was impressed. This film did not
feel like a retread. The filmmaker did the right thing am moved this part of
the adaptation from 1956 to 1980 and changed scenes to fit an audience that for
the most part had been born in the 80s period. For one thing the filmmakers
made the things that Pennywise used to scare the kids more on track to what
scares kids now a days, like zombies.
But one thing they kept true to the novel as well as the mini series was
that they focused on the kids and spent a lot of time developing their
characters and their individual sub-plots, thus making the audience care for
these characters, which is the only way to really build tension and bring on
some real scares.
As far as the special effects, I was pleased to see that
they weren’t perfect. There is a certain charm about a little cheese in the
special effects, at least for me. I have to say the only makeup effect that I
really didn’t like was the one with the diseased leper. For me it felt way over
the top and pulled me away from the scene. Though I do have to acknowledge that
this was the image of a leper from a germ sensitive kid’s perspective, I would
have liked it to be a bit more realistic for the gross out factor. Seriously,
people were actually laughing at the scene.
But all in all I can honestly say I enjoyed this version of IT and I look forward to Chapter 2 in 2019….
Keep on Creepin’, Horror Bob’s Blog….
