Solid Stephen - It

Though It was never my favorite Stephen King movie (that's reserved for Pet Sematary), and I didn't read the book (liked The Shining best), I do love my Tim Curry, and loved his Pennywise. Thinking, "who could possibly top that?" I almost passed over this new iteration of It. I never cared much for clown tropes anyways. But then I found out who was playing the new Pennywise-one of my new favorite actors, Bill Skarsgaard. I've been watching his amazing performance in Netflix's Hemlock Grove, and just knew I had to see what he could do to scare a bunch of kids into floating.

He did not disappoint. His Pennywise is his own, and it's quite scary. What I liked so much about this movie was that, as full as it was with "jump scares," they all served a very real purpose. Most of the time, those kinds of cheap thrills are for the audience's benefit only. That's not how the most horrific scenes in this movie are framed. It's the way that Pennywise scares the kids, isolating them and taunting them before spiriting them away-so you feel a connection to those characters. They felt entirely authentic and organic to the storytelling. It was so good that, even when I was scared, I was grinning like an idiot at how awesome Skarsgaard was.

I enjoyed the darker places that this version of the movie went to, pulling more from King's original text, which I appreciated. The history of the town's curse was really exciting as well. The woodcut-style colonial sketch with Pennywise peering out was especially good, and I won't be at all surprised to see some form of that on my walls one day soon. I'd love to see that story element developed further in the sequel to this film, where a very grown-up group of kids must rehash this nightmare.

K Rating: 5/5