Confront IT!

As a child, what was or has been your greatest, deepest fear? What is/are the childhood moment/s when you really felt afraid of what you were seeing, hearing or feeling? Did you ever develop the consciousness to confront your fear during your childhood? Or rather, did it confront you? What happened after the confrontation? Confrontation is a choice. These are some of the questions that last week’s Warner Bros. And New Line Cinema release, IT, asks the audience to ask themselves. And while one thinks about these, it is also important to bear in mind that the fears of a child are different from the fears of an adult. Again, fears of a girl-kid are different from the fears of a boy-kid. Some fears are time-driven, time-dependent. Time plays with (y)our mind. Childhood and adolescence come with their own set of fears; youth has its own anxieties and insecurities, likewise for mid-life. The end of life is a fear in its own capacity; perhaps the ultimate fear and the most generic one as far as films are concerned, especially horror films.

[1]Stephen King's IT
 Book Cover, 1st Edn.

There are some #mildspoilers ahead but they only serve to build up some anticipation to watch this movie. Most horror movies present their ghosts and ideology within a milieu of adult fears or anxieties. Few films, especially horror films, precisely choose to converse with the fears of children, which is not the same as simply depicting a child’s body as a vector of evil spirits! Generally, a horror film chooses an adult to be the slayer of ghosts and demons. 

IT allows the children to be the heroes, and the child actors don’t disappoint. And this is the specialty of Andy Muschietti’s IT and the genius of Stephen King (I am yet to read the titular 1986 novel). Generally, children’s films are made out to be a happy, bright affair. But IT combines the sombre, dark aesthetics of horror with the fun elements of children’s films. The film switches between these two modes with subtlety and masterful ease. One of Muschietti’s accomplishments in this film is how he managed this almost glitch-less flipping of the narrative between innocent humour and horror. IT takes us into the fearful, innocent, witty, and gritty minds of children and the issues they face in their lives: at home, in schools, on the streets. Someone or something is observing these fears, following the children. If Heath Ledger immortalised ‘The Joker’ as Gotham’s evilness in The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan 2008), Bill Skarsgård’s ‘Pennywise – the Dancing Clown’ shall remain an equal monster. Sadly, one will not get to see Ledger’s Joker on the screen again. It would have been great to see him on the screen reprising his Joker act in the recently announced solo Joker-origin film. But be warned: Skarsgård’s Pennywise shall return and unlike the film/novel’s story, it will not take 27 years to see him on the screen again – the best part! Coming back to the film, there are some scenes here (even a mild subplot) that interrogate parents’ role in shaping a child’s psyche. Parenting is not at the forefront here, but it is definitely invoked, under scrutiny and problematised. So is bullying of kids in school by other kids.

[2] Pennywise

One of the high points of this film is its writing: both screenplay and dialogues. You get to hear some of the best adult-themed (!) one-liners when the “Losers’ club” – that’s what the film and the novel call the protagonist kids – is in conversation. The film is peppered with some amazing dialogues that can only be understood by a restricted audience; hence, despite being a film about children’s psyche, kids do not qualify as an audience for IT. The kids will need to wait till they turn 18. What also make this a restricted viewing are the special effects and the cinematography when Pennywise is on the screen and ready to charge at the victim. In many scenes, like most other horror films, the audience is made to adopt the kids’ point of view to feel the fear. But then there is little that camera angles offer when it comes to such situations. In retrospection, the climax sequences could have offered/afforded the audience with some shots of the kids from Pennywise’s point-of-view (pov). Horror narratives generally offer shots of other characters from ghost/spirit’s pov throughout the story, except when it’s time to bid adieu to the ghost/monster: this is something that I haven’t seen or it just might be my ignorance. Or if this has been done, IT could have done it too. Another high point of the movie is the spaces where horror occurs – the most potent and lingering ones being the sewers, the town library and a projection screen! The climax offers a stunningly detailed VFX-created eerie atmosphere and the end comes like a quiet quasi-revelation. Don’t wait for a DVD-release or a television premiere: just buy those tickets and confront IT!     

[3] The Loser's Club

Image/Video Credits:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:It_cover.jpg#/media/File:It_cover.jpg

[2] https://www.warnerbros.co.uk/~/media/images/warner%20bro/movies/it/general%20images/6.ashx?mw=1200

[3] https://www.warnerbros.co.uk/~/media/images/warner%20bro/movies/it/general%20images/5.ashx?mw=1200200