IT review - SPOILERS
Watched Saturday the 7th
Saw It 2 on Saturday and as a major fan of the original miniseries with Tim Curry (yup still) I can say this one was just as entertaining as IT 1 if you liked that. I thought both parts were extremely well done and mixed a great sense of “drama and suspense”. I don’t think either amount to any form of “horror” and that’s honestly fine with me. We actually took an 8 year old to see the film (who loved the first part) and were worried the theater would give us shit for bringing him in until we realized 1/3rd of the seats looked like they were filled with kids under 12. I can’t see ANYONE considering these films horror if young kids are watching them. I remember sleeping with the lights on for a week at about 9 after watching the exorcist. We all laughed more than jumped through both these movies, this one especially.
To me these 2 films seemed more like Goonies or Monster Squad than anything else. As anyone should know this chapter features the losers as adults, but that’s about as far as I’m going into explaining anything since you can read that shit everywhere else. I kind of want to fill out some of the plot points I thought were interesting and sort of put people minds to rest on the “opening” scene everyone’s complaining about.
To me it’s worth a watch. We saw it in IMAX and don’t regret the money spent. (FULL SPOILER ON OPENING SCENE)
So many reviews I’m reading about the movie are trashing the opening scene and I just can’t figure out why. Its starts off with a young male homosexual couple at a carnival. It ends how you might think in a small rural town in a “horror” film would with a young male homosexual couple. Okay, what’s the problem? The couple end up getting attacked by a group of young men, which was odd to me because I SWORE the youngest one in the group was a lesbian girl!?!?! They beat them senseless then throw one over a bridge to his presumed death. Now I’ve only read a small portion of the book. I’ve tried reading it on at least 3 occasions and never get more than a few chapters for some reason. I do want to give it one more shot though. In the book (and these movies) the entity of IT feeds on fear and hate. It’s eluded to (from other research reading I’ve done on the book) that one of the reasons the town of Derry is so fucked up is because of the entity. It creates disarray and confusion to hide its existence and work beneath the shadows. It stirs the cauldron of racism, bigotry, sex, and, in that circumstance, homophobia to make the townspeople ignorant to the fact it even exists and that people turn up missing damn near constantly. Why is it so hard to think that IT did not stir this incident up? It magnified the contempt and hatred these guys had for the homosexual community, instigating this attack so it could feed emotionally then concluding physically. This is what this demon does so it shouldn’t be so out of the ordinary this happened. What’s even more perplexing is this scene for the most part is actually in the book. Was it graphic? Yes, but isn’t that what “horror” is supposed to do?
(End spoilers on that scene)
One thing I found sort of interesting in the combo of the two movies became the dynamic between Bev and her father. I’m fairly sure the book (nor films) never outright said her father was sexually assaulting her but BOY was it hinted at. I don’t know if the subplot of Bev’s mother was in the book but this film really filled in some context between them. I almost got the feeling watching that scene that the entire ordeal was really the clowns doing, either intentionally or even subconsciously. The way her father spoke then jumped erratically from condemnation and blame to near praise and then some form of odd acceptance just made me believe the clown had more to do with that all that we might want to look. Like IT might have been in his head feeding him those thoughts, like it did with Henry Bowers. Think of it like both a callback and then face slap (to us) to the first film where they explain adults just look the other way most times when the bad things happen. We see the situation on the surface, we just take it as face value because as humans that’s what we want to believe. I’m not trying to defend Bev’s dad by any means, and I would suspect the clown could only entice or twist actions you are already predisposed to but perhaps if they moved away from Derry he might have just been a mildly normal dad to her. Just a sub thought really. Wanted to see if anyone who’s finished the book could fill in those blanks or even add/subtract from the theory. On a side note, what’s with King and dads molesting their daughters? I know of 3 stories with it. This, Delores Claiborne (another good flik) and the newer Jerold’s Game. I’m fairly confident there’s more out there as well. Why does no one else see this? Kind of odd.
One other thing a couple reviews griped about was the CGI. Personally I saw nothing wrong with it at all. CGI always just looks like CGI, get over and stop whining. The scene in Bev’s old apartment and the dog CGI were a bit CGI’y but all around fine. Then again I was fine with “Doomsday” in BvS. Don’t get why people complained about that, it was fine. Mind you though I thought the CGI on Thanos’s black order looked like shit.
The casting was great. I thought the guy who played Eddie was spot on both physically and personality wise and Bill Hader was awesome. I rarely EVER say any actor was good but for some reason I always find Hader great. In fact the only few people I’ve ever thought were just “good” were Robin Williams, that girl who plays Sabrina and I guess now Hader. Skarsgard did just as good a job with Pennywise as the first film and is pretty good at these oddball parts (Hemlock Grove).
(spoiler)
The one thing that confused me though was it was pretty put out there Hader’s Richie was gay himself but that never really got closure to me. I kept waiting for that moment when Pennywise would bring it out to the rest of the club but it never came. I truly thought it might even be a last ditch effort on the clown part to split them up before they killed him only to have it actually backfire on him through their acceptance. I thought it was a plot point and possible twist never really used which was disappointing. At one point the clown even rubbed it in Richie’s nose “he knew his secret”. It could have actually been a decent call back to the opening scene as well.
(Spoiler End)
One last thing before my edits, as I (again) never finished the book but was there ever any type of comparison the Pennywise and the way he came to earth, which was the same in the book and this movie, and Lucifer’s fall from grace? With Maturin being the creator of the universe and IT being it’s natural nemesis it seems maybe King was pulling from this mythology a bit? I did like the turtle in this being supplemented by the Native American tribe, I thought it was a really neat way to avoid a giant talking turtle and the actual CHUD from the book which was way out there.
All in all, go check out the movie, it’s worth the watch. Let me know your thoughts.
