BEFORE: In July of 2017, I was in San Diego for Comic-Con, and on my second night there, which would have been the first full day of the convention, I stepped out after the convention had closed - this was after taking a tour of the items owned by Carrie Fisher that were being auctioned off, because it's always good to kill a little time on the way out, so that the crowds dissipate a bit. You see, when everyone gets out of the Con at the same time, the nerds head over to get something to eat in the Gaslamp District, usually all at the same time. So I tried to kill some time before I had dinner, to help cut down on the wait time - I hung out across the street from the Convention Center for a while, taking photos of some people in costume, then made my way over to a parking lot near Petco Park, where I'd seen food trucks serving in previous years.
On my way there, as I walked along Harbor Drive, there were various large displays for films like "Kong: Skull Island", because the big Hollywood production companies have figured out that renting some space across the street is cheaper than getting a booth inside the Convention Center, and it also allows for more freedom regarding the size of the display. I'm sure that putting a giant ape skull inside would have cost an arm and a leg-bone, but outdoors in a rented space in a park, it works much better.
Before I got to the food truck to enjoy some delicious German and Polish sausages, I spotted a kid wearing a yellow rain slicker, with the hood up over his face, shuffling along and carrying a red balloon (as seen in the poster image below). Now, to anyone familiar with the work of Stephen King, that immediately calls to mind the young Georgie from the "It" novel, so the creep factor was really high. But still, what was this? Was this just some fan of horror novels, dressing up like Georgie? Was it just a kid in a raincoat? Because it hardly ever rains in San Diego in July, so that didn't make sense. Two blocks later, another kid in a yellow raincoat with a red balloon - or was it the same one? Was Pennywise following me?
It turned out to be a very clever marketing campaign - the film's promoters had hired a bunch of Asian men, all of them on the short side, to walk around the very popular nightlife district, where thousands of nerds would be dining and partying, to dress like Georgie and not make eye contact. I saw one fan approach one of the Georgies, I think to ask for a picture, and the man in the yellow slicker gave him a promo card with the film's information and release date. For a very small investment, they sure got people talking about the film, and probably creeped out a bunch of people too. I saw a couple cosplayers dressed like Pennywise at the con, too - my first reaction is usually to make sure that other people can see him, too.
Javier Botet carries over from "Crimson Peak". And I go from a horror movie that put me to sleep to one that will probably keep me awake tonight...
FOLLOW-UP TO: "It" (1990) (Movie #666)
THE PLOT: In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids band together to destroy a shapeshifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, their small Maine town.
AFTER: What's really a shame here is that some people probably watched this film and thought, "Oh, this is such a rip-off of "Stranger Things". While of course there are some similarities - a bunch of teen boys and one girl who ride bikes, play video-games and are the ONLY ones in their town to be aware of the evil presence that plagues it - it's time for the casual fans to do some research, and realize that the Netflix mini-series was made in homage to Stephen King's stories, such as "It" - combined with a good dose of Spielberg films like "E.T." and "Poltergeist". Yet I'm sure comparisons have no doubt been made, aided by the fact that one of the teen actors from "Stranger Things" appears here as a member of the "Losers Club".
Of course, before the 2017 version there was the 1990 miniseries - which was not perfect, not by anyone's measuring - for starters, it was made for TV, so Pennywise could only be sort of "I'm going to eat you..." scary, not like this R-rated film, which could be more "Oh God, he's EATING me!" scary. It was also a huge mistake in the miniseries to start the story in the present, when the characters were adults - this not only clued the audience in that the kids would survive their first encounter with It, and have the chance to grow up, but it also forced the first episode to feature about 45 minutes of the Losers Club calling each other on the phone, so they'll agree that "we have to go back..." But people talking on the phone doesn't really make for exciting television.
Still, the miniseries got some things right - we got to see that a teenage Seth Green would grow up to look like an adult Harry Anderson, and that any random black kid would grow up to look like Tim Reid. Also, even a chubby kid could grow up to look as good as John Ritter, that was there to give kids like me some hope.
Starting the film back in the past (depicted as 1960 in the mini-series, 1988 in this film version) makes much more sense - because this way casual viewers not familiar with the story might not be sure that all of these kids are going to survive. There's a large enough cast, after all, that a kid or two could sacrifice himself to give the others a better chance of victory as they face off against this shape-shifting parasitic demon that seems to feed off of their fears. And who has more fears than a young kid or a teenager? There's the fear of not fitting in or being accepted, the fear of getting bullied or picked on, the fear of getting smothered by overprotective parents, the fear of failing at school or sports, or even the fear of "wasting" one's summer vacation. Throw those on top of the very basic fears - fear of the dark, fear of fire, fear of spiders, fear of tight spaces, fear of open spaces, and yes, the very rational fear of clowns.
Hey, don't blame me, blame the clowns who are way too in-your-face most of the time, with their gaudy make-up and their squirting flowers and giant shoes. Jesus, clowns, could you be more needy when it comes to attention? Do you HAVE to dress up in bright colors and go on stage and fall down and act silly? What kind of a warped person would want to do this? Then, of course, you've got your John Wayne Gacy-type serial killers, and your average pedophiles and molesters who are trying to attract the attention of children - blame those people for the bad reputation that clowns have, not me.
Of course, it's hard to beat Tim Curry, who appeared as Pennywise in the 1990 mini-series, as an evil riff on the sort of typical Barnum & Bailey clown, a "Bozo" gone bad. Of course, before we had the modern circus clown archetype, there were the "fool" characters in theater, like in the Comedia dell'Arte, which probably came from Shakespearean fool or jester characters before that. The British harlequinade theater developed the clown as the foil for the harlequin character, and if you examine Pennywise's costumes in this 2017 version, they seem to hearken back to the British pantomime clowns of the 19th century. This makes some sense, especially if Pennywise had been hanging around in Derry during the 1800's, and maybe happened to kidnap a stray circus clown, then based his look on that fellow, because it seemed to attract more kids. Pennywise probably would not have been nearly as successful terrorizing the children of Derry if he'd adopted the "sad tramp" look of an Emmett Kelly-style clown...but the appearance in Eddie's nightmare visions of the diseased, infected hobo seemed like maybe a shout-out to this stereotype.
Derry, of course, then becomes a sort of "Bermuda Triangle" for missing kids, with 6 times the national average of kids listed as "missing" on milk cartons, or there's some kind of mass child-killing event every 27 years or so in the town's history. You'd think that some librarian or town council would do the math before a group of 6 teens, so what's up with the adults in Derry? Do they just not care, or are they not aware, or does Pennywise's psychic energy just connect better with the younger minds? I'm not an expert on the novel's storyline, but perhaps by the time people become adults, they've already faced down a number of their fears, or they no longer apply?
The Losers Club gets NO help from the adults - would the cops even believe them about the clown that travels through the sewers? The police just aren't equipped to handle "drain monsters", I don't think there's even a code for that, if you told them a few gallons of blood just spurted out of the sink drain, they'd probably tell you to call a plumber. Or they'd write the whole thing off as a prank. It's also possible that Pennywise has managed to hypnotize all of the adults in town, so they can't see him or any of his works, leaving him free to prey on all of the delicious children.
But the moral here is an oldie but a goodie - believers have to band together to defeat the evil power. This works on bullies, monsters, recurring sexual harassers and even elected officials (some of whom qualify as "all of the above"...). And if you're a teen who's currently being bullied, you now have a NEW way to fight back - just find out where your bully lives, and tie a red balloon to his mailbox. Umm, just make sure he's seen this movie first, and then you're golden.
There will be a sequel, "It: Chapter Two" out next year, and some of the casting choices for playing these children as adults are quite inspired. But I think that script might have a few hurdles to face, just because children are so much easier to scare, they're more prone to fear. How the heck is Pennywise going to scare them as adults? Will they be shown nightmares of male pattern baldness, or statements from their banks showing that they're not properly funding their retirement accounts? Maybe their nightmares will be their kids telling them that they've been accepted into an Ivy League school, with a massive tuition bill? Or maybe just go with the tried and true, scare them with medical diagnoses of hypertension, plaque psoriasis and diabetic nerve pain? I admit there are many possibilities here, but none of them seem very cinematic. I guess we'll all find out next year.
Also starring Jaeden Lieberher (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), Bill Skarsgard (last seen in "Atomic Blonde"), Sophia Lillis, Jeremy Ray Taylor, (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip") Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"), Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Nicholas Hamilton, Jackson Robert Scott, Owen Teague, Logan Thompson, Jake Sim, Tatum Lee, Stephen Bogaert (last seen in "X-Men: Apocalypse"), Molly Atkinson, Geoffrey Pounsett (last seen in "Total Recall" (2012)), Pip Dwyer, Stuart Hughes, Steven Williams (last seen in "22 Jump Street"), Ari Cohen (last seen in "Maps to the Stars"), Joe Bostick (last seen in "Lars and the Real Girl"), Elizabeth Saunders (last seen in "Amelia"), Megan Charpentier (last seen in "The Shack").
RATING: 6 out of 10 rows of teeth
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