Yesterday, I believe was the opening day of the film IT in
Cinemas. After seeing the adverts circulating the internet lately, my friends
and I decided that it was a film that we had to see. And being a person myself
that loves horror movies and others of a similar genre, I had high expectations
for the film.
The film IT is an attempt by Andre Muschiettis to recreate
the earlier adaptation of Stephen King's work. The earlier adaptation was
created by Rob Reiner in 1986. I have not yet seen the earlier version for
comparison but I have heard from friends of mine that the two films are almost
exactly the same.
The film focuses on a group of pre-adolescent children in a
small town. Each of these children has had a hard background for various
reasons. For example one of the children has an abusive father and one mother
is very over-protective of her son to the point that it is extreme. Also the
children are frequently referred to in the movie as losers or outsiders. This is
the primary reason that they are brought together in the first place.
In the film there is a shape-shifting killer clown that the
children refer to as "IT". The clown plays off the children's fear
which they have accumulated through each of their own personal experiences from
their home lives. This makes me begin to assume that the Clown is a
representation of the fear in their lives which they are all needing to face up
to in order for it to have no power anymore.
The children in the film are taunted by IT on numerous
occasions so they decide to take it upon themselves to see what he is and to
see if they could ever take IT down.
In my opinion the film was good but there were certain
aspects of it that let it down. For example, there were jump scares repeatedly
to a point where had no power at all. There is also a large romance cliché
between two of the main two protagonists which in my eyes was not needed. The
film although effective was also not scary in my eyes. This may be down to the
fact that I watch horror movies a lot though. But if you are scared of clowns
you may indeed hate this film.
