FEAR THE CLOWN
Children confront terrors in King tale
“It”may be based on a 1986 novel by the American literary phenomenon known as Stephen King, but it features tropes from two other 1980s icons, “The Goonies” (1985), which was co-written by Steven Spielberg, and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984), a film by late writer-director Wes Craven.
“It” wisely updates King's setting from mythical Derry, Maine — King's own Yoknapatawpha County — in the late 1950s to Derry in the late 1980s, when “A Nightmare on Elm Street 5” is playing. The action begins with a sequence that will burn itself into the minds of a new generation of kids in spite of that R (for violence and profanity) rating.
Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott), the 5- or 6-year-old brother of good-looking, stuttering tween Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher), dons an iconic hooded, yellow rain slicker to sail a paper boat his sick brother made for him down the street to a sewer. The boat disappears. Gazing into the sewer, Georgie sees the story's demonic antagonist, Pennywise the Dancing Clown (baby-faced 6-foot, 3-inch Swede Bill Skarsgard, who is much better than people say), a nightmarish Bozo-from-hell, who feeds on children and their fear and lives beneath the town's streets in a network of sewage tunnels and wells.
Like many of King's greatest creations, the premise is simplicity itself. Take the terrors of childhood and puberty, including clowns, and to King's great credit, many absolutely horrible parents, and add the supernatural.
After Georgie goes missing, other children do as well, and outcast Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), one of the members of the film's so-called “Losers Club,” learns that — holy “Jeepers Creepers” — something awful happens to the children of Derry every 27 years, and the time is up. Also in the Losers Club are Beverly Marsh (a good Sophia Lillis), supposedly the town's Lolita-aged slut; foul-mouthed, filthyminded and funny Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard of “Stranger Things” in another breakout performance); asthma-plagued nerd Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer); bullied rabbi's son Stan Uris (Wyatt Oleff); and squeamish sheep farm worker Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs).
In scenes sometimes lacking cohesion, Pennywise and his red balloon visit each of the children in the manner of dream haunter Freddie Krueger, and their shared experience with the demonic clown brings the kids closer together.
Director Andy Muschietti, of the creepy-crawly 2013 effort “Mama,” is good with the young actors, making them stand out as individuals and members of a team. Dreamily shuddering visuals by the brilliant cinematographer Chunghoon Chung (“The Handmaiden”) add appreciably to the nightmarishness of the action.
Skarsgard may not be quite as terrifying as the great Tim Curry (Dr. Frank-N-Furter himself) of the 1990 TV adaptation. But remnants of Skarsgard's Swedish accent give the wheedling, taunting, shrieking clown a perverse otherness and equally powerful operatic element. All children hear the voice of Pennywise in their messedup heads at some point. Skarsgard is poised to be the voice of a new era.
(“It” contains extreme violence and profanity.)