Movie Reaction: It

Formula: Stand by Me + a scary clown

"Perfect timing" is difficult to define or separate from "good timing". For example, Beauty and the Beast made $500 million this March. That's a lot of money, however, that was always going to make a ton of money. Releasing it in March was already a proven Disney strategy (See: Cinderella). So, that's a case of good timing or even good strategy. Something like Get Out is trickier. I'd argue that its success was more about attracting an under-served audience, although certainly you could argue that its February release after a Trump inauguration that made a lot of people nervous made the timing pretty great. I dispute calling it 'perfect' though, because 1) I think it would've made a lot of money whenever it was released and 2) anything less than $200 million just isn't impressive enough for the moniker. For that matter, The Force Awakens' $936 million record-busting box office haul isn't "perfect timing" when you consider that, adjusted for inflation, 5 of the top 20 movies ever are Star Wars movies.

I reserve "perfect" for cases like Alice in Wonderland - a mediocre movie that rode the 3D craze that Avatar started to shatter the March opening weekend record and make $1 billion worldwide (the fifth highest grossing movie ever at the time). "Perfect timing" is American Sniper tapping into something in the public consciousness, building the right ad campaign, following an underwhelming Christmas season with few holdovers, being the only Oscar player with any traction that season, and becoming the highest grossing movie of 2014 (making more than - at the time - Clint Eastwood's next three highest grossing films combined).

It, my friends, has perfect timing. It's the right movie at the right time. Last summer, Stranger Things sparked a renewed interest in this exact style of 80's nostalgia and horror. That had people fondly remembering the best of the Stephen King adaptations while forgetting about the newer forgettable movies*. Also, It is the first broadly-appealing release after an historically abysmal August. It had a great hook, a hungry audience, and proper studio backing (as opposed to most horror movies that feel like a studio afterthought). As a result, it has become the rarest of all movies: a September blockbuster.

*It's actually very similar to what happened with JurassicWorld. The 3D re-release of the original Jurassic Park in 2013 ignited nostalgia for the original film rather than the last memory of the franchise being 2001's quickly forgotten Jurassic Park 3. As a result, Jurassic World briefly broke the All-time opening weekend box office record, which no one predicted.

But is It any good? The short answer is yes. Reaction done.

I haven't seen the 1990 mini-series nor have I read the book. All I know about It is "scary clown" and "sewer". If you are like me and need a summary of the film, here you go. It takes place in 1989 and follows a group of preteen friends who are all bullied at school or in general for all the standard reasons (one kid has a stutter, another is fat. The girl is called a slut. It's probably not a coincidence that one kid is black and I think two are Jewish). A year after the younger brother (Georgie) of one of the kids (Bill) goes missing, along with many, many other children, these friends start investigating why. It turns out that this clown in the sewer is tapping into each kid's biggest fear then killing child with it. I don't consider any of this a spoiler, because you can deduce almost all of this before the main title even comes on the screen at the beginning.

This is prototypical Stephen King, both the horror elements and the interaction between the friends. It should attract fans of Carrie and Stand by Me in equal measure. My favorite parts actually had nothing to do with Pennywise the clown.

I have a soft spot for kids or teens swearing, particularly this 13-year-old sweet spot. While 8th graders are objectively "the worst" by almost any measure, I love that mix at that age of knowing all these words but not knowing how to use them. They say abhorrent things because they are still trying to figure out how and when to say things. It's like how someone will say "that's what she said" until they are finally able to come up with their own joke. String together some swears and hope they make sense. Don't get me wrong. I love the precision swearing of Veep too. Kids swearing like this is just really authentic. There's an earnestness to all the kids in the group that makes it easier to excuse how many of them fit into easy character types (there's the leader, the researcher, the glue guy - or girl in this case, the loud foul-mouthed one, etc.). It's a large enough core group, that several of them only have one or two defining characteristics. They work together so well that I wouldn't mind revisiting them. The young actors are great. Jaeden Lieberher is the stuttering leader of the group. He's brave without being imposing or physical, which is a tricky balance. Finn Wolfhard is having a fantastic time as the foul cousin of his character in Stranger Things. Jack Dylan Grazer is delightfully uptight. Jeremy Ray Taylor finds unexpected self-assurance in the chubby friend role that normally goes the way of the "truffle shuffle" in other films. Sophia Lillis is probably the best of the lot. She's definitely the most mature member of the group and navigates the complexity of being the only girl in the group pretty well. I should probably mention here that Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise is fine. He plays it big, which is required for the role. It's not a performance that will keep me up at night. Then again, I'm not scared of clowns, which could negate that assessment.

It's funny that I just rewatched Where the Wild Things Are the other day, because that's another example of the small sub-genre of films about kids that are for adults. In fact, the adults a pretty awful in this film. Abusive parents, useless authority figures. No adult character other than Pennywise, gets more than a few lines. I like how there's something not quite right about this town up to and including the adults. That isn't really explained in the film, but it fits the childhood perspective of the film. When a child runs into something in the world that doesn't make sense, the adults who seem to be in charge of the world suddenly get very imposing and frightening. That's all over the film and I loved it. All the adult performances are heightened in an appropriate way.

I can best boil what I don't like about the film down to one big issue and one small issue. The big issue is that I'm not a big fan of this style of horror and the conventions that come with it. I don't care for jump scares or "don't go in that room" scares. It's not that they frighten me too much (although I'm not immune to an effective jump scare). I just don't care for the mechanics. Most jump scares aren't earned. It's all driven by the music and a jump cut. There's a good deal of that in It. Then there's all the times the characters open a door that they shouldn't or separate from the group, despite knowing better. In general, I don't like when any movie, horror included, relies on someone being stupid in order to move the plot forward. That's why I love movies like Oculus or Paranormal Activity that are genuine investigations. Found footage films I like so much because they often have a baked in excuse for the characters to not know any better. But, when a character runs off by himself late in this movie after it was made abundantly clear that he should never run off alone and when literally all he has to say if "Hey guys, over here" to make sure he's not alone: that bothers me to no end. This is all a natural limitation to the genre, so there's only so much that I can hold that against it.

My smaller issue is the bullies in this movie. They are just too much. They're ready to straight-up murder other kids at a couple points and are only stopped by a lucky break or two for the victim. It's hinted at one point that the lead bully (Nicholas Hamilton) is possessed or something, but that's not until late. I guess you could say that their actions are being amplified by whatever is cursing the town. Or, perhaps it's a perspective thing. Like, maybe the same way that our protagonists see adults as threatening because of their indifference, they end up seeing the bullies as more dangerous than they really are too. That wasn't my read at all though. They are just this over-the-top extra threat when Pennywise is already enough, and they only served to clutter the narrative rather than add anything of value to it.

It's refreshing to see a major studio horror movie made with as much confidence as It. The film hasn't been defanged and turned in PG-13 movie, which I can't praise enough. The opening alone is far more savage than I expected. Where most big horror films are concerned with how to leave room for the sequel, It genuinely feels like part of a larger saga. In that respect, the grade Id' give for this film would be 'Incomplete'. I'm not sure I can assign any qualitative superlatives to the film, but I can say if more big  horror movies were this good, I'd be very pleased.

Movie Theater LVP (Least Valuable Patron): It's been a while since I've had to hand one of these out. This one goes to Mackenzie* who clearly had seen the movie, read the book, or seen the mini-series before and kept chiming in sometimes before something was about to happen. Even her friends were telling her to be quiet. I'm fine with an unconscious "Don't go in there" or whatever. Her comments were more announcements that she knew what was going on. Good job, Mackenzie. You suck.

*She sounded like a Mackenzie. I don't actually know her name.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend