As long as I’ve been a movie fan, I’ve avoided anything found in the horror genre. To me, horror movies were a one way ticket to needing to sleep with three lamps on for the next month and a half. However, after years of avoiding the horror genre, I finally worked up the courage to lean into it while convincing myself that I could handle it this time. Though telling myself this was a gamble, the one that I started my horror journey with was Tommy Lee Wallace’s 1990 film adaption of It, followed directly by Andres Muschietti’s 2017 adaption of It: Chapter 1. Based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, the story follows seven young outcasts that reside in Derry, Maine. They band together to face their own fears and fight an evil that only shows itself every 27 years. The two movies face stark differences both in the effects used, but also the story, character development, and level of fear that it evokes.
The only thing I knew about the 2017 adaptation was that it was rumored to be substantially scarier than the 1990 film. What I wasn’t expecting was for the overall quality of the film to be worlds ahead of the former. A stand out element that is definitely worth mentioning is the difference in introducing exposition and the main characters. I’ll be brutally honest: Wallace’s strategy of introducing each character one at a time with a phone call that Pennywise had come back and then giving them twenty minutes to relive their childhood trauma made the movie feel clunky and repetitive. Going back and forth between the past and the present gave me whiplash as I tried to discern which character was which, what their story was, and frankly, why I should care. That was my main complaint from the 1990 adaptation of It: I just didn’t care very much. Those characters marched right into battle with Pennywise and I couldn’t care less if they lived or died. Muschietti did this very well: by focusing only on the younger selves of the self-dubbed “Losers Club”, the audience was able to connect and grow to care for the characters because you were able to see their greatest fears, their not-so-pretty home lives, and more than anything else, their need for each other.
Not only were the characters and their stories presented more effectively, but I’d even go so far as to argue that they were portrayed better. You could chalk this up to the directorial choices made or the quality of the actors themselves. I feel like both of those elements were crucial elements in how well the film was received. The characters were given more complexity than their cookie cutter descriptive traits such as “the only girl”, or “the one with the dead brother”. I also have to hand it to the casting director: the actors had great chemistry and really acted their hearts out. This is a horror movie at its core, but I couldn’t help being struck by the similarities to the chemistry found in Stand By Me. I found the relationship between the members of the Loser Club to be just as endearing as the characters themselves.
Though all of the young actors in this movie were stellar, I have to offer kudos to the portrayal of both Bill and Beverly. I was completely and utterly put off by the manner in which Beverly was portrayed in Wallace’s It. There was never a scene in which Beverly wasn’t being bizarrely touched by one of the male characters, both when she was thirteen and forty. Needless to say, it was an odd directorial choice. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that specific choice didn’t carry over into the new adaptation. Bill’s character, however, was still considered to be the leader of the Losers Club in both adaptations. However, I was much more compelled by the 2017 version of the character. He is still viewed to be the leader, but not the brash and fearless leader he was in Wallace’s version. Bill was just a kid with a stutter who was in denial about losing his kid brother. Though as I previously mentioned, the development of all of the young characters was much better, but the differences in Bill and Beverly’s characters in particular stood out to me.
Now I’m going to say something I’ve found to be controversial. I felt like Bill Skarsgard’s portrayal of Pennywise absolutely blew Tim Curry’s out of the water. This is not to say anything ill about Tim Curry’s acting ability; I thought he was a good Pennywise and did well with the material he was given. However, his performance just had me saying, “Man, Pennywise is kind of a dingus.” I was only amused by this goofy clown that was supposed to be an ancient child killing demon. In the opinion of many, Skarsgard had huge shoes to fill to follow Tim Curry’s performance. I don’t agree. The two performances of the same character aren’t comparing apple to apple, but rather apple to orange.
Whatever the reason for playing the character the way he did, Skarsgard was stellar in the role. And unlike how I felt when watching Tim Curry, I was unnerved by his Pennywise. At times, I was so unsettled that I couldn’t sit still, almost like my skin was starting to itch. It was an interesting feeling for me, one that I was unfamiliar with. I was scared, but I couldn’t look away. I found myself enthralled by Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise the same way someone is mesmerized by a car wreck: horrified, captivated, and unable to look away.
As I previously mentioned, I would hardly call myself a horror veteran and had watched my first official horror movie only a day prior to both versions of It. That is to say, the fear I felt while watching this movie didn’t stick around. It was more a subtle feeling of being unnerved by what I was watching, and I feel like that means Skargsard did his job well. I think the directional choices to be unreliant on jump scares, but instead to goad the audience into being scared at the idea of evil being all around whether it is realized or not.
This movie is not at all without its faults, though.I had my fair share of complaints while watching. For a movie that was so subtle in its depiction of fear, Pennywise’s lair was a little too on the nose for my liking. Now, I know that the killer clown’s catchphrase is ominously telling people that “[they’ll] float too”, but did all of his victims really need to be floating down in his lair? It may be a small and silly complaint, but it felt corny and made me chuckle in spite of myself and what is an undoubtedly tense moment in the movie. I know that there are many who disagree that Tim Curry’s performance and 1990 adaptation of It was ever overshadowed by its newer counterpart. So here is my question for you: is this version favored because the characterization is of higher quality, or because it’s the original adaptation?
Lizzie Skaggs
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