IT

It’s hard to think of a more crush­ing and com­plex pas­sage in a person’s emo­tion­al upbring­ing than when the prospect of death becomes grim real­i­ty. The accep­tance of life as finite and expe­ri­ence as fleet­ing can real­ly take a chunk out of you – it’s just damn lucky we’ve got friends with whom to share that awe­some burden.

Andy Muschietti’s IT – sat­is­fy­ing­ly abridged from Stephen King’s 1986 doorstop – adopts the cin­e­mat­ic sta­ple of focus­ing on a gang of lairy high school oiks who are only able to tran­scend their earth­ly fears by band­ing togeth­er. Only with arms locked and eyes focused on a sin­gle point are they able to over­come their com­mon foe. Yes, it sounds like a super­hero movie. And yes, it sounds like TV nos­tal­gia hit, Stranger Things. But this is far weird­er and nas­ti­er than either of those.

In this case, death wears a ruf­fled col­lar and takes the form of a cack­ling, demon­ic clown named Pen­ny­wise (nice­ly played on the right side of camp by Bill Skars­gård). This gri­mac­ing spec­tre employs rib-tick­ling ban­ter and a shiny red bal­loon to lure his prey. He then slays them in stom­ach-churn­ing and vis­cer­al fashion.

When a major stu­dio tries its hand at a hor­ror movie as a way to ​“gin­ger up” the slate, the results are usu­al­ly bad, very bad or very, very bad. These works are like cheap cin­e­mat­ic fire­works, designed to burn bright­ly for an instant and frit­ter away in a plume of colour­ful ash­es (the home ents cir­cuit). IT is remark­able for a num­ber of rea­sons: it oper­ates as a con­vinc­ing and com­pelling pre-teen adven­ture movie; it takes its time to flesh out char­ac­ters, nev­er resort­ing to ciphers or obvi­ous vic­tims; it is pow­ered by a sub­tle and unnerv­ing sense of invest­ment in this fan­tas­ti­cal tale; and it’s not just scary – it’s dis­turb­ing too.

Jae­den Lieberher’s Bill Den­brough is de fac­to leader of the depres­sive wreckin’ crew being ter­rorised by the killer clown. He is a lanky, side-part­ed young actor pre­vi­ous­ly seen in kamikaze kid­die flick, The Book of Hen­ry. He’s the weak­est link of an ensem­ble filled out by tomboy Bev­er­ly (Sophia Lil­lis, extra­or­di­nary in chan­nel­ing a young Jodie Fos­ter), sweary geek Richie (Finn Wolfhard), gib­ber­ing hypochon­dri­ac Eddie (Jack Dylan Graz­er) and weed Stan­ley (Wyatt Oleff) who’s learn­ing Hebrew for his Bar Mitzvah.

Where Bill has the task of relo­cat­ing his long lost broth­er who was snatched one day in plain sight, all the kids have their own side­line trau­mas to deal with. These range from swad­dling par­ents (Eddie) and reli­gious tor­ment (Stan­ley) to rit­u­alised abuse (Bev­er­ly), though Muschi­et­ti refus­es to frame Pen­ny­wise as the sim­ple phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of these extreme grow­ing pains. The line is blurred and the film takes on a lev­el of cool ambiguity.

This is Muschietti’s fol­low-up to 2013’s for­get­table goth­ic runaround, Mama, and it’s a major leap for the direc­tor in terms of coher­ence, artistry, and deliv­er­ing a film which sub­tly exceeds the lim­i­ta­tions of its genre. The sto­ry takes place in Der­ry, Maine, dur­ing the height of the New Kids on the Block craze and over­sized med­ical-issue spec­ta­cles. It lov­ing­ly leach­es from the dusty and dis­tressed ​“Spiel­bur­bia” while nev­er lean­ing too hard on the care­ful­ly select­ed cul­tur­al bric-à-brac that sits in the back­drop. It’s a recent past which feels rel­e­vant, but also allows it to tap into work by genre mae­stros such as Joe Dante and Guiller­mo del Toro.

Yet the sim­ple rea­son why this film works is that, even though it runs at over two hours, pre­cious lit­tle of that time is giv­en over to lum­ber­ing expo­si­tion or unnec­es­sary back sto­ry. Pen­ny­wise is nev­er explained, and the kids lives are fleshed out in rudi­men­ta­ry but high­ly effec­tive ways – through inter­ac­tions and char­ac­ter tics rather dis­con­nect­ed plot filler. The film doesn’t stretch too hard for polit­i­cal rel­e­vance, but through the scant details giv­en of Derry’s event­ful past, room is allowed for speculation.

As a sto­ry, it doesn’t go to any place that you would deem too rad­i­cal. It care­ful­ly tees up the kids vs clown sce­nario, and plays spooky vari­a­tions on their inter­mit­tent clash­es. And by not stat­ing with any vol­ume what It is about, the film works beau­ti­ful­ly as a straight-arrow genre piece, and a por­trait of young peo­ple tak­ing com­mand of their own des­tiny. It feels like a film about the impor­tance of look­ing not to the present, but to the future for true sal­va­tion – which nice­ly chimes with King’s vocal hatred of an Amer­i­can com­man­der in chief, a man who seems vio­lent­ly obsessed with the short game. Maybe Trump is our Pennywise?