Review: It

Image courtesy of New Line Cinema

One of Stephen King's most successful elements as a writer is his ability to craft stories that are imaginative genre attractions (hotels that posses their caretakers to commit atrocities and cemeteries that enable the dead to rise again) filled with people who feel all-too human. His characters are flawed but lived-in - occasionally horrible, sometimes noble and frequently recognizable.

His 1986 opus "It," which ran well over 1,000 pages, featured two of King's most well-trod attributes - a terrifying villain and an achingly nostalgic story featuring young characters. His novella "The Body" was, in 1986, adapted into the movie "Stand by Me," which is not only one of the very best cinematic adaptations of King's work, but also one of the most wistfully thoughtful coming of age movies of that era.

Much like "Stand By Me," the novel "It" was set - during its first part - in the 1950s. Its second half took place in the 1980s. In Andy Muschietti's film adaptation, the story of "It" has been transferred to the 1980s and only covers the action from the first half of the book, while the book's second half will likely be made into a second movie that will be set in the present.

As the film opens, a young boy named Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) sails a paper boat made by his brother Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) down the rain-drenched streets of the fictional town of Derry, Maine. The boat sails into the gutter, where Georgie attempts to retrieve it and comes into contact with the story's demonic villain, a sinister presence that takes the form of a creepy clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard). Needless to say, things don't turn out well for poor Georgie.

One year later, Bill - still traumatized by his brother's disappearance - befriends a motley crew of the town's outcasts - a much slut-shamed girl with an abusive father named Beverly (Sophia Lillis); a small, asthmatic kid named Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer); a chubby, picked-upon kid with a penchant for New Kids on the Block named Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor); a perpetual jokester named Richie (Finn Wolfhard); the town's seemingly-only African American youth, Mike (Chosen Jacobs); and a Jewish kid named Stanley (Wyatt Oleff). The group's members refer to themselves as the Losers Club.

Each of the children have had run-ins with Pennywise, but also the town's sadistic bully, Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton), and his cohorts. In the novel, Pennywise often took the form of 1950s horror movie villains - the Wolf Man, for example - that scared the various Losers, which played well for the purpose of the novel, but came off as slightly silly in the 1991 TV adaptation. In Muschietti's film, these sequences are thankfully missing - as well as the highly controversial sex scene involving the Losers Club - and replaced with scenes of the children being taunted by Pennywise as he summons up their worst fears. A painting that frightens Stanley is particularly creepy.

The film's genre elements mostly work. As I've mentioned, Skarsgard is creepy as Pennywise - especially during his first appearance in the gutter - although his ability to constantly pop up directly in front of the kids and take various shapes tilt a few scenes toward the absurd. But the film's biggest selling point is the camaraderie between the Losers, all of whom are likable and appropriately awkward as one might expect of kids at their age.

Whether the second chapter of "It" - in which the adult versions of the Losers Club returns to town to combat Pennywise once more - is successful (in the TV version of the novel, the adult section wasn't as convincing as the one involving the Losers as kids) remains to be seen, but this first chapter is a mostly successful endeavor. Although it doesn't belong in the pantheon of the best adaptations of King's work - which includes "Stand By Me" and Stanley Kubrick's iconic reimagining of "The Shining" - it's an amusing horror funhouse with more heart than you'd typically expect from the genre.