Friday, September 8, 2017

IT - The Great Adaptation of Scary Stephen King's Novel

On its second day premiere in Indonesia, my wife and I went to see this movie last night. It was rather challenging to arrange the time to see the movie, considering it has > 2 hours duration and the option was either to see at 6.35 PM which was very tight due to my office hour and my wife's event or 9 PM which was too late. Anyway we decided to go for the earlier one and both of us actually almost could not make it. I arrived during the trailers of other movies while my wife arrived just before the movie start (so lucky of her). Anyway, let us get on with the movie now.

Brief Story Line

It was the summer holiday of the year 1989 in the small town of Derry where a group of young boys nicknamed Losers' Club that consisted of Bill (Jaeden Liberher - St. Vincent, The Book of Henry etc) who was like the leader, the foul mouthed Richie (Finn Wolfhard - Stranger Things TV series), the tidy Jewish boy Stan (Wyatt Oleff) and the boy who was always paranoid Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer). They plan to go to a location which according to Bill's calculation was the place where supposedly his younger brother Georgie might have ended up since his disappearance back in 1988.


In the same school, there were some bully gang led by Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton). They always bullied Bill and his friends and also the new kid at school named Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) who was always studying since he got no friends. Ben had a crush on a girl who was considered the school's slut named Beverly (Sophia Lillis). With another boy who was home-schooled named Mike (Chosen Jacob) and due to the same experience of being bullied, they all would become very close. Each and every one of these children was having brief scary supernatural experience and some of them had similarities of a dancing clown who they later on referred to as "IT" (played by Bill Skarsgård - Hemlock Grove TV series).

Bill who could not accept Georgie's disappearance still insist in finding out more on the incidents especially with additional info from Ben who had done some research about Derry's history including the mysterious disappearance of people so many years ago. However his friends were not as enthusiastic and they were all afraid of IT. Not to mention the consistent badgering of Henry's gang.

So could Bill and his friends finish what they started? Could they face their fears and solve why people were missing all the time? Find them all in this wonderfully done scary movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Phew this movie was absolutely amazing! It was having quite a lot of scary images and shocking disturbing scenes. What I love most about this movie was the great sound effects. They were really exceptional and I think a lot of us in the audience (especially my wife and including myself) were given the scare due to the sound effects. I would really really recommend you to see this movie with a great sound system. Yesterday we had the experience of seeing it in the studio with Dolby Atmos and I truly enjoyed it.

I got to admit that I have completely forgotten about the plot and topic of this movie despite I have seen it many years ago on TV (they made a 2 episodes miniseries back in the year 1990). But I remember that it was about a clown and it was quite scary. So when I heard they were making remake of this and after seeing the trailer many times, it was clear that this movie was real good. If you have seen the trailer and you already thought it was amazing, well you ain't seen nothing yet, coz the movie was way better. This was not a movie where all the good things have been shown in the trailer and there were no more surprises. 

I also loved the way the movie's tone was constantly interesting. Whenever the scene was not creepy or scary, the behavior of the kids were always fun to see. It had an aura of "coming to age" in this movie with so many natural things that boys their age would do/face (you will get loads of laughs during the swimming part, or Ben's crush on Beverly and many more). They would definitely grow on you. The characterization of the clown by Bill Skarsgård was spot on and he was indeed quite scary. The kids gave wonderful performances as well. We could actually picture them as kids in real life.

Another good part was the setting (like the bikes, the houses, the costumes) that really gave the feel of 1980s. Including the popular boy band then, i.e. New Kids on the Block and the iconic walkman. As a horror movie, I think this one successfully gave us a scare, but apart from those scary moments, I think the best part was the ability of the director (Andrés Muschietti who directed another horror movie Mama in 2013) to direct a bunch of young actors and actress and create a great movie. I think this one was worthy of all the buzz and I can understand why it was loved by those movie critics. 

Overall, this movie was awesome entirely. I had a most interesting experience watching this movie in the theater with my wife. Not even the loud voices of people next to me could disturb my enjoyment. So please for those of you horror lovers, you should watch this one at the theaters near you asap. It is definitely worth to see either with your loved ones or with your friends, but this one not suitable for kids, even if the majority of the casts are children. I think those who loved the novel IT written by Stephen King would enjoy this one as well. I understand it was a very good adaptation of the novel, much better than The Dark Tower. And better not miss this one out coz the ending of the movie gave the hint of a possible sequel (fingers crossed). Oh ya, there was no post end credit scene that you probably expect from this kind of movie, though there was some interesting thing just before the end in case you want to wait for it.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars




No comments:

Post a Comment