#04. It (1990, Tommy Lee Wallace)
By Eivind Langdal
11th September 2009

IT is a film that works better as an experiment than as a movie (technically, it is mini-series made for TV, but let’s not get caught up in technicalities). It is as if Stephen King sat down and wrote down what he liked about horror and what he couldn’t care less for, then put emphasize on the former and tried as best as he could to rid of the latter. The result is a film that doesn’t simply act as a set-up for a lot of people to become victims of some kind of monster, but actually tells a story. Yes, a story, something we don’t actually see that often in horror movies, either because they tend to get in the way of the audience getting scared or maybe because horror screenwriters simply are too lazy to think of any (after all, it’s much easier to simply make up a villain and make him stalk some teens). But King is not a screenwriter, he is a novelist, and therefore he understands the importance of the story.

I’d say that, without this film, this feature would maybe not have existed. Or maybe it would, but it would be less likely. It’s one of those films I remember. I first saw it a long, long time ago at a time when I was far too young to be exposed to a clown so scary he would literally make me lose sleep for several days. That clown is Pennywise, portrayed by Tim Curry in one of horror history’s most important (and best) performances. He is an otherworldly creature that feasts upon the fear of children. Because of his supernatural powers, he is able to tap into their deepest secrets and use them for his own twisted gain.

IT begins when a young girl is found killed by mutilation in the little town of Derry. She is one of many, and when a detective named Mike stumbles upon a photograph of a young boy named George at the crime scene, his memories of his youth start to return to him. He remembers when he and six other kids challenged Pennywise and made an oath to get together if he ever returned. The movie tells the story of the kids in flashback while Mike try to get in touch with his former friends, all of whom have grown up and left their childhood hometown.

We learn that the kids were all outcast in their own way. Bill is a stuttering young boy who we soon learn is the brother of the aforementioned George (who stumbled upon Pennywise one day while playing in the rain with a paper boat). There’s also Ben, who immediately gets in trouble with a group of rascals due to him being overweight. He quickly falls in love with Beverly, who is teased for being the daughter of a janitor, who abuses her. There’s also Eddie, who suffers from asthma and has an overprotective mother that doesn’t like him having friends. There’s also the inseparable Richie and Stan, the former a young comedian mocked for his glasses, and the latter a Jew. Lastly, there’s Mike, who is black. He is the last to join the group.

At first, they are all separately terrorized by Pennywise, but eventually they find out that it is best to challenge him as a group. They decide the best way to kill him is to use a slingshot to shoot silver earrings at him (the movie never makes it very clear exactly why this is the best way). The scene where they have try-outs to find out which of them is the best shooter is one of the movie’s finest. Indeed, it is here the movie works best. While this is primarily a horror story, it also acts as a great tale about growing up, and it is honest and realistic in its portrayal of being an outcast as a childhood. When the group decides to call themselves “The Losers”, it is one of the most affecting moments the movie has to offer.

Sooner or later in this feature I would have to stumble upon the question, “What is the scariest movie I ever seen?” and the answer would easily have been this film. As I previously said, this movie deprived me of quite a lot of sleep, and why exactly I decided to see it again, I don’t know. But I knew I didn’t remember enough to write a worthy review of it, so I decided, what the hell, you only live once. Sadly, as it turned out, the movie didn’t have the same effect on me now as it did then. What I found flawed about the movie then, I still found flawed now (the second segment with the adults was always bound to be less scary than the ones with the kids), but now I discovered other flaws. Apart from the fact that the movie simply wasn’t as scary this time, I also found it to be quite lacking in a few other departments as well, namely the one named “acting”. Some of the people here are fine, but everyone are given one too many moments where their limitations become too visible, which is never fun watching.

Is IT a great movie? No, it’s not. It might not be particularly good either, and yet, you would never find me calling it bad. Maybe that’s because it has a place in my heart due to the fact that is scared the living shit out of me once, or maybe because there are, admittedly, a lot of things to commend about this movie. It is excessively long for its genre (well over 3 hours), but instead of plod along, the movie uses this long running time to flesh out the many young characters so that when we meet them again as adults, we know exactly who they are. We know their fears, the desires, their personalities, but more importantly: we want to spend time with them. We want to watch them succeed, and not just in defeating Pennywise, but also in their regular lives. I think that deserves a mention.