Pennywise is a Pre-Halloween Scare in 'It'

Bill Skarsgard is electric with madness as Pennywise.

Bloody and Brilliant ‘It’ is a Horror Hit

Take a small, quaint town, add in a supernatural and gleefully evil killer clown, and a squad of misfits, and you’ve got classically creepy Stephen King fare. It takes place in the 1980’s in Derry, Maine, a cozy little New England suburb that is shaken to its core by a string of brutal killings and abductions. Something sinister is targeting the children of Derry, and the adult citizens are too busy just papering the town with wanted poster after wanted poster instead of looking into what is actually going on.

It blasts off with a promising and straight up terrifying opening sequence. An innocent little boy named Georgie (Jackson Scott)chasing his paper boat down a waterlogged road, gasps in shock when he sees the little paper craft dip down into the grate of a sewer. Stooping down to try to retrieve his afternoon’s DIY project, he comes face to face with the titular IT: Pennywise the dancing clown. This time, not juggling balls or kicking his legs up in a jig, but instead lurking in the sewer, tittering with glee with the boat clenched in his hands. In the original 1990s miniseries played by Tim Curry, Pennywise was hardly imaginative take on a killer clown, and not exactly scary at first glance. Or even second or third glance, really. This incarnation of Pennywise (an unrecognizable Bill Skarsgard) is what nightmares are made of:  he has a grotesque mouth with protruding teeth, a jittery manic voice, and constantly spittle and saliva oozing out from his mouth. Pennywise has the wired energy of a junkie hyped up on his latest fix, and is electric with madness. It’s impossible to look away from him, no matter how disturbing he is.

Georgie and Bill put the finishing touches on the boat.

After his kid brother Georgie is gruesomely attacked and dragged into the sewer,  prepubescent older brother Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) and his parents are devastated. Months pass and time skips ahead to the end of summer. Bill’s still struggling to face the facts-- that more likely than not, Georgie is truly gone. With a prominent stutter bungling up his words Bill and his other misfit besties: yamaka-wearing Stanley (Wyatt Oleff) , smack-talking and annoying Richie (Finn Wolfhard), and tiny hypochondriac Eddie (Jack Grazer) are taunted and berated by their peers and a pack of teen bullies. Joined by two other friendless wonders of Derry Middle School-- Beverly (Sophia Lillis) who is relentlessly slut-shamed by her female classmates and universally disliked, and transfer student Ben (Jeremy Taylor) : an overweight, New Kids on the Block fanboy-- Bill and his “Loser’s Club” of fellow middle school misfits set their sights on getting to the bottom on what evil forces are afoot.

The teen bullies, more bloodthirsty than ever, are intent on hurting the Loser’s Club boys as much as possible. Forget smearing a dollop of mashed potatoes onto glasses. These psycho haters are switch-blade toting, gun shooting and itching for a fight. The leader, Henry (Nicholas Hamilton) is the mullet wearing, stab happy, and certifibly sociopathic one of the bunch. He carves the letter H into Ben’s soft fleshy belly in one scene, aims to bash the boy's head in with stones in another and one day bored of shooting cans in his backyard gets the brilliant idea to ready, aim, fire at the neighbor's very alive tabby cat. (Don't worry, the cat doesn't get shot OR die, the kitty gets away totally unscathed).

Eddie, Richie, Ben and Stanley consider the evil that's plaguing Derry.

After these bullies deliberately speed down a narrow alley, aiming to slam into young homeschooler Mike (Chosen Jacobs), he dodges just in time and ends up careening into the path of The Loser Club. And joining, as the newest member. Mike is  a young black boy in a predominantly white town and is vocally discriminated against. It’s not just these racial forces that hurt Mike, but his personal life is stressful too. After losing his parents to a house fire, Mike moved in with his slaughter-house operating uncle, and he’s expected to learn the trade, pronto. Putting a bullet in the brains of innocent lambs is hardly what he wants to do, and joining Bill and the other misfits gives him an escape from those duties.

If the Loser’s Club seems familiar that’s because it is. This plucky pack of rejects is two parts Stranger Things and one part Stand By Me. (And not just because Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard shares the lead role) The group dynamics amongst the boys (and Bev) is a constant tug-of-war that’s full throttle and sometimes as explosive as dynamite. There’s rapid fire banter, hilarious heckling, and also when there needs to be a deep solidarity and brotherhood. Much like Stranger Things each of the boys starts out as the template to a trope, but they hardly stay one-dimensional. Their dialogue riddled with f-bombs and other swears, and unfiltered freaking out and excitement comes across so natural and organically. This chemistry alone makes It a must watch.

When it comes to plot, believability is one of the highest sells of It. The postcard perfect layout of the town is firmly grounded in reality. But, as the film progresses the atmosphere gets darker and increasingly claustrophobic and frantic. The horror doesn’t rely on jump scares and excessive digital enhancements-- instead emphasizing the fears we all have and multiplying them by about 100! Creepy, shadowy tunnels that echo, winding hallways with not end in sight, and a the charred remains of a house, dilapidated and forsaken at the edge of town. Even the woodlands begin to take on a terrifying twist as the kids explore further and further and get closer and closer to the big bad. It’s a deftly crafted freak-show that is cinematically engrossing.

Just your friendly neighborhood burned-to-a-crisp abandoned house! 

Craving mayhem and fear to feast on, Pennywise preys upon each of the kids in the Loser’s Club sending vivid hallucinations of the most disgusting and demented quality hurtling at them. Showers of blood, flesh and hair, spurting up from a bathroom sink, flooding the entire room with red; a diseased man with rattling breathe and his flesh peeled and rotting away; and woman, tall and thin and faceless with a needle-toothed mouth and a shrill scream, are just a few of the haunts. There’s a reason It is rated R. Not just for all the cursing and rudeness, but because many of the violently scary scenes are graphic-- often stomach-churningly so, expect to scream, throw your hands up to shield your face, and have your heart thudding and endless beat in your chest.

The plot in It diverts from the original miniseries by electing to focus on just the kids determination to see what It is, and stop it. The storyline where the kids are grown and return to Derry once again to confront It when it attacks the town once again, isn’t here at all, and with good reason. The movie isn’t rushed and doesn’t leapfrog between time periods, something that could’ve made this a hectic and muddled mess. Instead, part two will be released the next few years, and is a perfect example of a truly effective way to split a movie.

If there is one shortcoming, to It is that know very little about Pennywise and It. Most of the knowledge is gleaned from Ben. Before he joined up with the Loser’s Club he often sought refuge in the library. Diving into books on Derry’s history, Ben unravels some of the twisted and unspoken tragedies that have plagued the town since the late 1800s. One thing that appears over and over again in the grainy black and white photographs he combs through is a manically grinning clown. We get a teaser of the history, but no concrete details on this demons origins, how he operates, and what his ultimate m.o. is. It’s a tease that we got to see some of the ways Pennywise is embroidered into Derry’s history, and a little frustrating that it never goes anywhere. Part two, more likely than not, will have that backstory-- but more details really could’ve been peppered throughout this film, gradually building up a narrative.

Bill, Richie and Eddie, go a-hunting for the clown! 

As in the tradition of American Horror Story one of the core messages to take away from It is that the greatest monsters aren’t always the demons in the sewers or the creatures that lurk in the shadows but more often than not are flesh and blood human beings. Anyone can have a vicious streak, anyone can have dreadful intentions. Racism, harassment, sexual abuse, doesn’t come from the twisted mind of Pennywise. It comes from the hands, mouths and actions of the men and women of Derry, the day to day encounters the kids have. The pain and fear is already there, Pennywise exploits it, intensifies it, and devours it, and we the audience, simply cannot look away.

All photos from IMDB.