It review

A faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel “It” has been a long time coming. Of course, there was the two-part miniseries that aired on network television in 1990, and though it hasn’t aged particularly well and was constrained from delving into most of the visceral terror described in King’s book, the series has its fans and Tim Curry’s performance as the evil clown Pennywise has become something of a cult-horror icon. The development of the first true cinematic adaptation of this novel has finally been realized by Argentinian director Andy Muschietti and with the help of New Line Cinema, this adaptation finally has the budget and the R-rating that it needs to realize this story with more creative freedom.

King has never been known for his brevity, but “It” stands as one of his largest and most ambitious works, containing over a thousand pages describing a group of bullied pre-teens who have to band together to kill the monster that’s been terrorizing their town of Derry, Maine. The book first tells the story of how the self-branded Losers Club meet while on their summer vacation, and then it revisits these same characters 27 years later, when they are forced to return to their hometown to once again destroy the evil entity they once thought was destroyed. For obvious reasons, Muschietti has decided to cut the story in half and streamline the remains, only concerning himself with the Loser’s as a kids, setting up a sequel for the adult half.  Here he does his best to balance their childhood traumas with that of their confrontations with the demented clown.

A group of child actors can always be mixed bag of performances and acting styles, but luckily for Muschietti, this cast has been assembled with care. Their reactions to the movie’s horrific imagery, as well as their perceived comradery as outsiders and friends is perfectly pitched. We’ve seen Jaeden Lieberher before in pictures such as “St. Vincent” and last year’s “Midnight Special,” but his performance here as Bill Denbrough steps up to the emotional weight of the character whose still mourning the murder of his younger brother Georgie. Finn Wolfhard, of the very King-esq Netflix series “Stranger Things,” also turns in a great performance as Richie, the group’s wise-cracker. The rest of the cast is a little less familiar, with Jeremy Ray Taylor as the overweight library geek Ben, Chosen Jacobs as the racially-targeted Mike, Wyett Oleff as the nervous Stanley, Jack Dylan Grazer as the hypochondriac Eddie, and Sophia Lillis as tough but fragile Beverly Marsh. The screenplay wisely gives each character enough screen time to build the necessary empathy and to underline the story’s dominant metaphors about over-coming childhood trauma.

As a horror film, this is somewhat conventional, but scary enough. Bill Skarsgard’s turn as Pennywise finds a delicate balance between mystery and menace, though it’s sometimes apparent that Muschietti leans into the devilish clown when he doesn’t know how else to build tension in a scene. As such, the more Pennywise is on screen the less we’re afraid of him. The scares are creative and sometimes intentionally blackly humorous—bringing to mind New Line’s flagship horror icon Freddy Krueger--but the film’s pacing, largely dictated by how and where the screenplay decides to skip around King’s tome of a novel, becomes repetitive and episodic towards the movie’s extended second act. All the important scenes are touched on and the book’s themes are still intact, but the rhythm of the film feels oddly metronomic and mechanical. The scares, while individually effective, sometimes cry for variation throughout.

As an adaptation, “It” has its problems, some structural, some tonal, but overall this is an imaginative and evocative horror film. What makes it stand outside of usual ghostly chiller that’s retreaded every year is the attention paid to its characters and their relatable woes as outsiders. The bullies and many of the adult roles lack the same amount of depth, but Muschietti’s sensitivity for his primary cast elevates and informs the movie’s broader monster shocks.

Grade: B

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Sep-2017

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "It."

Carrie review

              Brian de Palma’s 1976 adaptation of Stephen King’s “Carrie” is not only one of my favorite horror movies of all time, but among one of the greatest films of the 70s. It’s full of surprising performances, tender sentiments and it brilliantly walks a stylistic tight-rope between intentionally campy melodrama and operatic terror.  But despite my adoration of the original film, I can confidently say that this 2013 remake really, really sucks.

                The idea of Kimberly Peirce taking a stab at this story isn’t the worst idea anyone ever had. After all, this is the indie director of 1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry”, the film that got Hilary Swank her first Oscar, playing a transgendered victim of intolerance.  In a lot of ways the structure and themes of that film is not too far off from King’s first novel— a teenage female protagonist with a secret, spends the first two thirds of the story heading towards a violent but inevitable conclusion.  And though we didn’t exactly need a new iteration of “Carrie”, at least Pierce’s approach to “Boys Don’t Cry” was unflinching and painfully honest.  However, none of that nuance or personality is explored in this flaccid, overproduced remix of a remake.

                Whether trying to remain faithful to the original novel or paying homage to de Palma’s 1976 version, this new adaptation doesn’t stray far enough from what we have already seen. Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a depressed, unpopular high school senior who’s bullied at school by the other students and emotional and psychologically abused at home by her religious zealot mother (Julianne Moore).  Upon secretly realizing that she has the ability to move things with her mind, a fellow student surprises her with kindness by having her football star boyfriend take her out to the prom, where she is unwittingly targeted by her enemies with a dark and disgusting prank.

                What makes this story unique to the horror genre is the way the audience is asked to sympathize with Carrie’s plight.  She’s a meek and vulnerable character in a cruel and mean spirited world, and when the violence and mayhem does take place, it’s not only supposed to be cathartic and thrilling but also tragic and unfair as well.  Unfortunately, this updated version seems so poised to get to the action that it blandly glosses over the gravity and pain that’s necessary to inform the characters and their motivations. This is in no small part due to the obvious miss-casting of Chloe Moretz in the lead role. 

                Unlike the mousy pathos that dripped from every gesture and tick that Sissy Spacek encoded her character with, Moretz simply mugs and pouts as a way of ineffectively masking her natural confidence.  By the end of the film, when she does get to boldly enact her revenge, Chloe’s physicality, combined with the film’s artificial looking special effects, more closely resembles a superhero than an enraged victim of life-long abuse. Either way, she never makes an effective connection with audience.

                 Julianne Moore does her best to downplay the histrionics of Piper Laurie’s iconic portrayal as the monstrous Margaret White, but in trading Piper’s operatic tantrums with whispered brooding, the character recedes to the point of barely registering on camera.

                Stylistically, this lazy remake doesn’t have a specific vision. It’s vaguely modernized, as we can tell by the inclusion of smart phones and Youtube, but even this semi-clever cyber-bullying conceit isn’t explored deep enough to fully realize its potential.  Most of all, and most importantly, this film is frustratingly boring.  It slavishly copies the original beat-per-beat but somehow still manages to miss the power and the sorrow inherent to this story. It isn’t scary when it’s supposed to be scary, it isn’t sad when it’s supposed to be sad, and it’s only funny when it isn’t supposed to be at all. 

Grade: D-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2013