Tag Archives: stephen king’s it

IT Conquered The World!

by

0

As a part of my new personal initiative to stay active on my blog, I figure I’ll start posting reviews of movies, TV, and whatever else might strike my fancy.

We’ll kick things off with the biggest movie news of this past week: How Stephen King’s IT smashed all sorts of R-rated horror movie opening weekend records.

I’m a massive Stephen King fan. I’ve probably read more King than any other author combined, but I suppose that’s not saying much considering some of his page counts. But books like IT and The Stand prove themselves worth the time investment.

To go off on a slight tangent here, I’ll add The Shining and ‘Salem’s Lot as my other two favorite King books. I’d still love to see a good version of the former that’s truer to the source material than Kubrick’s film, while the latter has actually had two pretty damn good miniseries adaptations. Of course that doesn’t mean it couldn’t use another go-round now that Hollywood was finally able to produce a great adaptation of one of King’s horror novel

(Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption are great films, but neither was based on a horror story)

I’ll keep my review portion short and to the point: I thought IT was the best horror film I’ve seen in years. It accomplished that ever-difficult feat of making the viewer really care about the protagonists, and want to see them vanquish the terrifying-but-weirdly-charismatic villain.

 

IT works as a coming-of-age story, a story about the everyday terrors of living in a small (and seemingly cursed) town, and a tale of doing battle with an ancient monster.

Perhaps the most impressive thing was Andy Muschietti – and the team of screenwriters – creating the perfect sort of momentum. When the members of the Losers Club were terrified of Pennywise, then the clown was presented as the most intensely terrifying thing possible. And, towards the end, when the Losers began believing in their ability to defeat IT, the viewer was carried right along in that emotional wave as well.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how good all the kids and Bill Skarsgard were. I’ll always have a soft spot for Tim Curry’s Pennywise, if only because the 1990 miniseries hit me at a very impressionable time in my life, and I was the same age as the protagonists were at the time.

But Skarsgard’s Pennywise scared me when I’m 38 rather than 11, and that’s a bigger accomplishment (the R-rating and advances in visual effects sure didn’t hurt his efforts).

The subject of experiencing IT as a child and re-visiting it as an adult is the perfect segway to my last two cents. Everyone else is throwing their dream cast around for IT Chapter Two, so I’ll offer mine below.

I gave myself a few rules to follow:

  1. The actors need to be able to embody the attributes of the adult versions of their Losers Club child counterparts.
  2. The actors have to be people who might realistically be cast in the role. So we’re avoiding megastars, and actors who command mega-millions in salary.
  3. They need to be able to sell the audience on the idea of being grown-up versions of the Losers Club. Having a passing resemblance doesn’t hurt here.

Without further adieu:

Bill Denbrough – Jaedan Lieberher

Adult: Charlie Cox

 

 

We need someone who can display the scars from a traumatic childhood – Bill more than the others because of the way he lost his brother – but who can also snap into the leadership role when the time comes to confront Pennywise one last time. I feel like Cox brought both those sides to the table over the course of playing Matt Murdock/Daredevil for three seasons.

Richie Tozier – Finn Wolfhard

Adult: Paul Rudd

Rudd can sell Richie as a successful comedian, being one himself, who can simultaneously annoy his old friends and endear himself to them. His performance as Ant-Man also showed that he can shift into the hero mode needed to face down Pennywise.

Beverly Marsh – Sophia Lillis

 

Adult: Amy Adams

 

Jessica Chastain’s name has been bandied about for this part, and having worked with Muschietti in the director’s debut feature Mama might give her an edge. But I like the idea of Adams bringing the same emotional energy that she brought to Arrival to the role of Beverly Marsh. If you can deliver an honest emotional response to time bending back into itself once, I believe you can do it again.

Ben Hanscom – Jeremy Ray Taylor

Adult: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Several actors come to mind that could probably play the part of a formerly overweight punching bag who grew up to be a hunky architect. There were guys like Chris Pratt (too expensive) or Nathan Fillion (doesn’t quite have the gravity) so I went with Coster-Waldau, who’s been killing it in an ensemble over 6 seasons of Game Of Thrones, and who also worked with Muschietti in Mama.

Eddie Kaspbrak – Jack Dylan Grazer

Adult: Adam Scott

I’ll have to re-visit IT sometime to confirm this, but I felt that Eddie delivered just as many laughs as Richie. Therefore, we’re casting another comedian who has also shown some dramatic chops in things like Big Little Lies and Friends With Kids. Wouldn’t hurt to bring over some of that frazzled Ben Wyatt energy from Parks And Recreations either.

Mike Hanlon – Chosen Jacobs

Adult: Michael Kenneth Williams

Mike is the one who stayed behind to “keep the watchtower” so he’s spent the past 27 years serving as a librarian in Derry while his friends all dispersed to enjoy highly successful lives in blissful forgetfulness of their child-eating nemesis. Needless to say, Omar from The Wire has definitely seen some shit. Williams can bring both the shakiness that comes from realizing that the monster is feeding again, as well as the steely resolve needed to drag people he cares about back into the horror as the only ones who have a chance to stop IT.

Stanley Uris – Wyatt Oleff

Adult: Jason Segel

 

**SPOILER ALERT**

Stanley doesn’t last very long, opting to off himself rather than return to the place where he almost had his face eaten by the nightmare lady from his father’s creepy-ass office painting. Segel is a familiar face that the audience will be comfortable enough with to effectively feel the impact when he takes that fateful bath.

That’s what I’ve got for now. I’ll be back soon, so thanks for taking the time to humor me with a read.

Fighting The Horror

by

0

It’s been a little while since my last blog post, and I wanted to make sure that my favorite time of the year – Halloween Season – didn’t pass without putting something out there. So, what I’m going with is my taste in horror movies and where that taste may come from.

I grew up in the ’80’s, so the focus here will be on the first horror flicks I can remember seeing and the effect they had on my scary movie proclivities. Let’s do this chronologically to give it some form of order.

I was only 2 years old in 1981, so Halloween II had been out for a few years before I ever managed to see it. It still left an impression on me, as the location of a dark and mostly empty hospital still strikes me as one of the best locations for a scary story. And it was a simple enough story, Michael Myers was seeking to finish the job by killing his sister Laurie Strode (that she was his sister was only revealed in Part II and never mentioned in the first Halloween). At the same time, Dr. Loomis was hunting for his own answers about what made Michael Myers into what he had become. Admittedly, Halloween was a better movie that Halloween Part II, but I rather liked how Loomis’ and Laurie’s arcs finally tied together better in the sequel.

halloween2

1985’s Fright Night was the first vampire movie that I remember watching. Living in the suburbs myself, I really dug how they turned all the things that make people who live in the ‘burbs feel safe dangerous. Because, if you can see a vampire taking a victim and he can see you watching him then there really is no safe haven. But it ultimately had to be high schooler Charlie Brewster who dragged actor-turned-vampire hunter Peter Vincent in the battle against the bloodthirsty Jerry Dandridge. That Fright Night managed to inject a good bit of dark humor into the proceedings only made me connect with it more. As everyone knows by now, laughing and screaming are really just a short breath away from one another. The 2011 remake wasn’t too bad either.

frightnight

Silver Bullet, based on Stephen King’s novelette Cycle of the Werewolf, also came out in 1985. There would be several werewolf movies from around this era that would blow away this one in my mind eventually (An American Werewolf In London & The Howling), but I didn’t see them until I was into my teens. This one was similar to Fright Night in that it set the horror in a quiet little town that couldn’t possibly be equipped to deal with it, while one kid knew the truth but nobody believed him. Swap in a werewolf for a vampire and I’m good to go!

Silver-Bullet

Looking at the common bond between these first three  movies – “Watch out suburbs, here come the monsters!” I probably was just really hoping for a creature to sweep into my hometown so I could get my hero on. Of course, that would be after said creature took out some of the folks I was less fond of in my school. I, of course, would be ready to deal with the beast because…well, because I’d seen these movies after all.

Moving away from the suburbs and into the summer camp, Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) was the first of the franchise that I’d seen. Honestly, it still may be my favorite of the series. That it was the third film in the Tommy Jarvis Trilogy of Friday The 13th films helps to earn it that top spot. After confronting Jason Voorhees in the previous two Friday films (okay, technically it was only actually Jason in Part IV) he was finally a bit better prepared to fight back. I mean he was no Dr. Loomis, didn’t even have a Medical Degree, but he was the best protagonist that the Friday series ever rolled out. That Tommy and co-lead character Megan made up a poor man’s Kyle Reese & Sarah Conner combo only further endeared this film to me.

friday-the-13th-6

The next pair of films are more action/sci-fi than horror, but they hit my sweet spot early on in life just the same. Aliens (1986) and Predator (1987) are two of the greatest genre films of all time, and there’s nothing I can say about them that you haven’t already read five times over. Other than, perhaps, the reason I was drawn to them. I liked how Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and Arnold Scwarzenegger’s Dutch ended their respective films as equals to the monsters hunting them, and went into a final battle against them as such. In my opinion, nothing beats a good smackdown to end a movie on a high note.

enhanced-buzz-29241-1340056933-21

1990 saw the release of the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, part one of which is still one of the greatest episodes of genre television of all time. I was about the same age as the protagonists trying to survive the terrors of Lovecraftian College of Clowning graduate Pennywise (Tim Curry adding another iconic character to his resume), and so when this one rolled around I was dragged along in its wake.

it-pennywise

At around that point, the flood gates opened and 11 or 12 year old me was about to discover a whole lot more horror in a very short period of time. Which makes this a good place to wrap things up.

The one common strand of DNA that runs through every one of these stories is a theme that I look for in any other genre as well: the ability to fight back against the enemy. If I’m being honest, ghost stories creep me out more that monster mashes, because in many ghost stories there’s not much you can really do to battle the forces of darkness.

I suppose I’m just not really drawn to tales of helplessness, and that’s something that applies to things I watch, things I read, and things that I write. which is also why I get very flustered about stories of how the little people cannot possibly win against the sinister and corrupt power elite of society. I may not be a super optimistic person, but I certainly respond more to optimism than to fatalism. There’s more than enough of the bad guys winning in real life, I don’t need to see it in my fiction.

I believe that everyone has free will, and can fight as long as they have the strength to. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you win but don’t survive to enjoy the victory. But, as long as you’ve saved the people you care about, then it’s a worthwhile sacrifice. If you can deliver something fantastical, and stick the landing on the message above, then take my money because I’m there!