Before I get into my TIFF coverage, there is something else I must talk about. This weekend I saw the much anticipated
release of Andy Muschetti's new version of Stephen King's It.
I came around to the idea of this
adaptation after I saw the first trailer. I realized that there were
a lot of things that could be improved upon from the 1990 mini-series
so I gave it a chance. I'm very glad I did. Director Muschietti
did an exemplary job. After his previous film Mama, we already knew
he had a knack for set pieces and getting solid performances from
young actors, but he took it to another level with It.
However, from day one, it was evident that this
film would live or die on the portrayal of Pennywise the Dancing
Clown and Bill Skarsgård really nailed it. He didn't try to ape Tim
Curry's version, but rather used his own energy. I absolutely loved
the physicality he brought to this role. He looked like he was
literally drinking the fear coming off his victims.
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Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the clown in It. |
Apart from Pennywise though, it was
super impressive to me that Muschietti was able to assemble such a
wonderful cast of eight young kids that could not only act, but also
gel together as well as they did here. They were all great,
especially Sophie Lillis & Jack Dylan Fraser who played Beverly & Eddie. Lillis gave a wonderfully layered performance and Fraser had
this unique vibe that really made him stand out.
It's widely accepted that the
downfall of Mama came from its over-reliance on CGI and Muschietti has mostly learned his lesson from that. While It did employ substantial visual effects, a lot of them were used in really
creative ways. I feel like they utilized many different techniques, some
of them so abstract my brain had trouble latching onto them - the
lady in the painting and the headless figure in the library in particular were two
real standouts for me.
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The Loser's Club 2017 |
Looking back on It, I can recall so
many solid set pieces. In the first half of the movie, the sheer
volume of them was almost exhausting. Muschietti employed a modern jump scare formula, but he seems to have a better
handle on it than most of his contemporaries. He knows when to pull
back, before you fall over the precipice of desensitization. He also had the right
amount of restraint on his eighties fan service. It was set then, but didn't overly ram the decade down our throats as much
as Stranger Things tends to.
Another layer that I found really
enticing – and this could very well be cribbed from the book –
was the characterization of the town of Derry itself. I felt there
was this underlying thread that the townspeople were complacent that
this evil shit was just going to happen every quarter century and
they just hoped it wasn't their kid that got snatched. It would
explain why Eddie's mother tried to keep him sheltered from the
outside world.
It was a top tier King adaptation with
a measure of darkness very few have had. It always seemed to me that
his vision has often obscured while on its way to the screen,
either by the team at the helm or, in the case of almost all of his
small screen ventures, restrained from its full potential. It felt
much more like the adaptation glory years from 1976 to 1984.
I think It will take a lot of people by
surprise. The previous teleplay had a very playful predilection to it that
this one does not. Sure, there's the jovial shit-talking among The
Loser's Club, but once It appeared well... It's like I exclaimed
after the opening SS Georgie scene – “These guys aren't fucking
around.”
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