Be Reel Blog 2 - IT

A few weeks ago I got the privilege to see the movie IT based of the novel by Steven King about the Killer Clown, Penny Wise. The movie starts off with the oh so gruesome death of a young boy named Georgie, who kicks the story into gear right off the bat. With the fact that his death is a mystery, and with the help and curiosity of Georgie's older brother and his brother's friends, they go on a quest to find this clown and put him down once and for all. The film was almost exact to the book. Even though I did not read the book myself, the movie was so well made I had took time to research more about the book and read comparisons of the book to the movie. The movie from what I have been told, is so much more well suited to the story than the serious from the 90s, although it only covered the first half of the book unlike the serious that covered the entire book. At the end of film though, it explicitly says before the credits that this was only part one. This not just sparked a fire for me, but the rest of the community since the film was so well made. There were specific scenes in which had to be removed since they would be deemed too vulgar for the big screen, and others that had to be removed simply because they just did not fit. Whenever something was supposed to be in the movie, the director made sure to throw in various allusions to the novel to acknowledge that they did not just forget about the idea. For example, in the book one of the characters is afraid of werewolves, and being as IT is not really a clown (you find out early-middle on in the movie implicitly) and is actually a shapeshifting alien, and it shape shifts to the fears of children to "salt the meat" as they say in the movie (before he eats them). It would be weird and super cheesy for the clown to turn into a werewolf, so the director made the smart decision to take this out and instead place the idea in a scene which his hand turns into a werewolf paw and he scratches the boy. The directors choices were made for the better of the film and allowed it to be so much better.

On my end, horror movies are my favorite genre of film being as not only do I enjoy the creativity and the feeling of being scared, but I also appreciate the twisted side of films and how different they truly are from the rest. This film in particular, hit the spot. Not only was the plot immaculate and very interesting, it was also true enough to real life situations that it brought out true fear in the viewers. Personally, it takes A LOT to scare me, and I did not find this movie to be scary too much. It definitely was creepy and did a good job with jump scares. Jump scares are often what ruin horror movies, being as it takes aware the horror of the killer them self throughout the film and places it on the loud sounds for split second. I have to admit, the jump scares in this movie were done at the right time and only added to the overall fear portion of the film. Overall, I give this film the rating of a Good Good because of the amazing plot and overall well done piece, both in horror and in story.