Directed by Andy Muschietti (2017)
by Sandy DeVito

If there's a lingering, vague sense of disappointment regarding this film lurking somewhere in my soul, it's due to the fact that the first half of Muschietti's vision (yes, this is part one of two, dealing with the first time the Losers confront Pennywise while they're still kids, Part 2 will deal with what happens to them as adults) for one of King's most notorious novels comes so fucking close to being perfect, yet that five-star experience slipped through my fingers in small, dissonant moments during the third act. They're so negligible compared to the astounding, terrifying, grotesquely gorgeous and deeply genuine experience this film was for me that I almost wanted to pretend like they weren't there, and review this film as if I'd imagined them. Alas, I am a realist and an obnoxiously honest soul. There are some issues. The good news is, they're small, and the rest is so fucking good, that the final product is something of a miracle.

King's book is over a thousand pages long, and though it's mostly a masterpiece (let's just forget about that one part forever, shall we? Thank the space gods it's nowhere to be found in this adaptation), it is a trifle long-winded, dragging on minutiae and detail until you feel like you're about to drift off to sleep on a warm Derry summer afternoon. I appreciated the pacing in Muschietti's film very much in comparison, as not only do we get down to business knowing our seven characters intimately from the first scene (the same as it appears in the book: Bill {Jaeden Lieberher} making a paper boat for his little brother Georgie {Jackson Robert Scott}), we are swept along a steady current of events including intensely scary scenes almost immediately. The infamous opener to King's novel, wherein Georgie is murdered by Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) after his paper boat falls down a sewer drain, is, if anything, more shocking and horrible to see so vividly on the screen - wherein the novel we only hear about Georgie's arm being ripped from its socket, here we must experience it with him.

Skarsgård. Holy fucking wow. Unhinged and revolting, both sickeningly funny and deeply, bone-shakingly horrifying, his Pennywise has truly come to haunt the children of Derry from the bowels of some unspeakable hellscape. From the first moment we meet him with Georgie, his dead-eyed stare and whispering, needling voice seep into our pores, hinting at his otherworldly origins. It's one thing to imagine an evil clown from a book, and it's another entirely to stare Skarsgård's monster in the face, trying not to flinch. Once you meet him, you will never forget him--and I am all too certain someday he will come to haunt my dreams when I least expect it. It takes a helluva lot to scare me these days; after a steady diet of horror films for many years, I've seen pretty much all of it, or at least if I haven't seen it, I've come close to imagining it, but I dare anyone to say this incarnation of Pennywise is not frightening to them. And yet, he has a perverse charm that I cannot deny, a quality so essential to Pennywise that I almost didn't realize how important it was until I saw Skarsgård acting it out. He writhes and simpers and titters, he howls, skitters at Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) in the library basement on impossibly fast feet, bursts from the rancid waters of Bill's basement, haunts the dark doorway of the butcher's shop, eyes glowing out at Mike (Chosen Jacobs), grins with wretched glee at Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), who stares back in paralyzed terror. It's easy to say you're not afraid of clowns in a well-lit room surrounded by friends, but in the darkness, alone, in Derry, Maine, there's always another there with you, daring you to pretend he doesn't exist. Pennywise knows what you fear - and so does Skarsgård. His is the most astounding performance I've seen all year (in a year of astounding performances, mind you) and he will become legendary for it. It will be studied and re-studied. People will write theses about it, exhaustively blog about it, talk about it over drinks with friends ad nauseam. It will inspire the nightmares of a whole new generation. It's gonna scare the ever-living shit out of you.

Likewise, the cast of children they've assembled as the iconic Losers Club is as precise and sensitive as I've ever witnessed. Giving seven different protagonists distinct voices and characteristics is no easy task - thankfully, King wrote each of them so precisely - they just needed a cast and crew who loved and understood this story to bring these wonderful, distinct kids to life. And they've done it, almost impossibly. Each shines in their own moments, giving Bill, Bev (Sophia Lillis), Eddie, Mike, Ben, Richie (Finn Wolfhard), and Stan (Wyatt Oleff) astounding life that most of us have only imagined in the warm, empathetic hands of King's prose. Too often children don't seem real in films, but these kids do - they're dirty, vulgar, thoughtful, loud, energetic, emotional and utterly human. They cry and they bleed and they scream and they laugh together and they feel alive. Wolfhard's Richie is the incessant, offensive Trashmouth, Lieberher's Bill truly a leader and a sensitive, stuttering, thoughtful old soul. Lillis' Bev is braver than any boy, stronger and brighter, fighting harder battles than the rest of them could understand. Taylor's Ben glows with sincerity. Grazer's Eddie whines like a fly in your ear, just like Eddie on the page, Oleff's Stan is as timid and awkward, Jacob's Mike as calm, composed and wise. When they talk to each other, they talk as real friends do, and you fall in love with them. That love is deeply essential to this story, and without it, it could never have worked. The Losers emerge triumphant.

The production design and attention to detail is truly something special. Rarely have we gotten an adaptation of a King work that not only belongs so utterly in his universe, but feels like it truly knows and loves his work - rather than using expository dialogue to tell us about Derry and its residents, or small things about the Losers themselves, Muschietti's film often determines to show us instead - and in the visual medium that is movies, it brings us closer to emotions than words ever could. Bev's precisely assembled outfits, the shiny body of Bill's bike Silver, the quiet looks of understanding they all exchange with shining eyes, the boys' fascinated staring at Bev in her bra, the Derry residents' uncanny habit of walking away or ignoring the strange things happening in their town. But other than the small details, the horror of the film is stark and creative, fresh like a bleeding cut, as spooky as an old-fashioned haunted house, as scary as a grotesque dream you just can wake yourself up out of, as unexpected, fresh and shocking as anything I have seen in years. If King is the horror creator of our time, Muschietti's film is a love letter to his mastery. It understands why he is so great, and will remain so beloved, as long as his books exist. The notorious final form Pennywise takes at the end of this part of the story in the novel doesn't exist in Muschietti's version, and I'm sure some people will be unhappy about that - but in light of the incredible new monsters they've come up with, it ended up mattering to me not a whit. Javier Botet's paralyzing Leper, the Long Woman from the painting in Stan's father's office, the blood exploding from the sink in Beverly's bathroom, and the many shapes Pennywise takes in the climax are particularly unforgettable. The terror that is such an integral part of the story starts from the get-go and rarely gives us time to breathe, except when we're with the Losers when they are all together, protected by the intense love they share, and that is as it should be. When they are alone, and we are alone with them, we learn quickly that anything could happen - and it's gonna rattle us out of our skin.

Amid all my glowing praise, however, I have to mention the things that bothered me - SPOILERS, sort of. The biggest thing is the way they chose to change the circumstances of how the Losers get down into the sewers towards the end of this part of the story - in the novel, Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) and his toadies chase the Losers to the mouth of the sewer down in the Barrens, and they all go down together. In the film, Pennywise takes Bev captive after she escapes from her father - and the boys go down to "rescue" her. It's important if you've never read the book to understand that Beverly is undoubtedly the bravest of all of the Losers, but Muschietti's film reduces her to a damsel in distress at the most pivotal of moments, a trope that is so worn down and tired at this point I almost scoffed out loud in the theater. Why do this? Why reduce Beverly in this way? Likewise once they find her, she's catatonic and the only thing that brings her out of the trance Pennywise put her in is Ben deciding to kiss her. Not only is it creepy because she can't possibly consent to being kissed when she's comatose, but what the fuck is this Sleeping Beauty shit? The film uses it as some kind of revelation to her that Ben is the one who sent her the Secret Admirer poem that features prominently in the book and film, but why does Ben have to kiss her for her to realize that? There are plenty of other moments in the film where it seems obvious to her, and is definitely obvious to us, that Ben is in love with her. Both of these moments frustrated me deeply, and Bev and Lillis deserved better, frankly. Moments like these are where so often male directors/storytellers seem to stumble and lose their footing with female protagonists - they've traded one problematic arc from the book for another problematic arc in the film. Just let Beverly live, y'all. Let her be the fierce, ember-haired heroine we all know she is, and she indeed shows us for the majority of the film she is, even as a pubescent girl - she's Bev, bravest of the Losers, and she shouldn't need anyone to save her. She should be doing the saving we know she is capable of.

I sometimes felt somewhat on-the-fence about Benjamin Wallfisch's melodramatic score; it's almost Spielbergian in its reliance on big emotional cues and swooping, grand overtures, which can sometimes be a good thing, but doesn't always work. King's books have big emotions too, but sometimes the music verged on distracting when it should have felt more seamless, woven into the fabric of the story. Any jump scares in the film most definitely have a legitimate pay off in my opinion, but the music seemed to want us to leap about here and there at every dark corner, rather than letting us sit with our dread a little longer, build the tension a little deeper. Thankfully the production and the visuals are so incredibly good the music is often secondary and its mishaps are more easily overlooked than the plot issues in the third act.

There are going to be some dumb-ass parents who bring their kids to see this movie, and I feel for those kids. They are going to be scarred for life. I guess we all have that one film or book or experience that really scared the shit out of us when we were younger - something so awful to us we just never forgot it, that thing that still gives us the willies. It's first chapter is about that feeling most of all, that visceral gut-rotting fear that you feel when you're a kid, but it's also about the love that can conquer even the worst fear, the innocence of the love you feel when you too are young and seeing the world with fresh eyes. The spirit of Muschietti's film encapsulates those themes with precision, and though the time periods have been switched (Part One of Muschietti's film takes place in 1989, but in the book it takes place largely in 1958) to allow Part 2 to be in the present day, it does nothing to detriment the emotional core of King's exhaustive source material. Muschietti has created the definitive version of It for our time - and I'm very anxious to visit Derry again. Next time, though, let Bev do her thing.