Rating: 2.5/5
A storm brews in Derry, Maine. Mary Ann finds a doll on the ground. She hears a peculiar laugh and sees a clown hiding in the laundry. Her mother comes out to find her. Screams, police, ambulance.
Mary Ann is the sixth child to die or go missing. Mike, the librarian, snoops around. When he finds a picture of Georgie, he knows what to do.
One by one, Mike calls The Losers — his childhood gang that all had experiences with an entity they refer to as It, which manifests as Pennywise the Clown.
Though they had forgotten childhood, the phone calls sent them down memory lane, where they all gathered to fight Pennywise. They remember they each swore to return to Derry and fight if It returned.
You can't fight me, Beverly. You'll die if you try.
They thought they beat It. Thirty years later, they must confront It again.
What a chore! The first hour focuses on introducing the characters. Their arrival in Derry and reunion happen in hours two and three. We get twenty minutes of them in the sewers.
The script tries to vary the introduction formula, but there are too many characters.
The kid actors are great. The adult actors stand around making plans.
This was supposed to be a 10-hour miniseries, but the suits kept cutting it down, afraid of potential loss. I’ve watched plenty of TV movies. They don’t have to be inherently toothless, but I suppose the trade-off of audience vs authenticity left this movie middling.
The claymation is cool. Most of the “scares” are silly. They rely too much on balloons being scary. They also try to employ Twin Peaks-adjacent slow-motion and spotlights to emphasize scares, which only work once or twice.
Someday, moviemakers will realize that Stephen King’s books don’t make good movies.
Stray Thoughts
- As an infant, my bedroom was clown-themed — lamps, toys, bedding. I saw the trailer for It on TV. I was so scared, my parents had to redecorate my room.
- Annette O’Toole expressed disappointment over excluding the child orgy from the book. Okay!
- Could you imagine if Alice Cooper played Pennywise?