Loneliness of neighbor gives rise to pen pals
In the spring, Marleen Brooks — a 37-year-old property manager in the town of Park Hills, Missouri — returned home to find a handwritten letter from a 90-year-old woman she’d never met.
As Brooks read the letter, her eyes teared up. Her own grandmother, who had raised her, had died alone in hospice — a notion that still bothered her. The letter writer, Wanda Mills, had left an address — a house across the street and a couple of doors down.
“I literally, honestly, didn’t know anybody lived there,” said Brooks, who has lived on the street for 18 months.
The next day, she and a friend took cupcakes to Mills.
“She was excited that we came over there,” Brooks recalled, “and we sat and talked for about an hour.”
Mills, who has trouble walking and uses oxygen, told her that she hadn’t left her house in seven years, relying instead on caregivers who visited daily. But they weren’t the same as having friends, she said.
Mills had lived in her house for 51 years. Her husband and sister had died, as had one of her sons. Another son lives out of state. Although a third son lived next door, she told Brooks, he didn’t visit often.
Loneliness and isolation have been shown to have detrimental effects on health, leaving people more vulnerable to infection, cognitive decline and depression. An AARP survey found more than a third of older Americans to be lonely.
Brooks wondered how many others are living the way Mills was — unknown to their neighbors. She took a picture of the letter and posted it on Facebook, urging people to make sure to check on their neighbors and inviting them to send letters to Mills, opening a post-office box for her.
Then she had an idea: Why not invite people to write to others besides Mills? In late
poor quality of the adaptation.
The team behind the 1990 TV miniseries version of “It,” King’s 1986 novel, had a hit on their hands until the final moments. Having four hours to tell the stories of a group of friends in the 1950s and 1980s who come together to face their ultimate fears gave the production team enough time to get across a lot of the common themes in King stories, including how early events in our lives shape us, the influences of family, the dark side of small- town life and the bonds of friendship.
The only gigantic flaw in the TV production was the embarrassingly awful special effects at the end, which turned into a joke — a marvelous tale of horror driven by one of the great performances in Tim Curry’s career as the creep clown Pennywise.
Producers of the new version of “It” have circumvented both problems. Instead of telling the story the way King wrote it by bouncing between two time periods, this new “It” focuses on the friends when they are 13 years old. The later years will be told if there is a sequel.
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Those who haven’t read the book or seen the miniseries will find “It” to be a creepy fear factory running on the energy of Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise. Without the work of Curry as a comparison, Skarsgard’s performance stands alone because of the brilliant blend of comedy, horror and psychological manipulation that makes this clown as memorable as the first encounter with Jason or Freddie.
Without any background from the book, there’s no anticipation of the story becoming a psychological study of how scarred young people can be when the stuff of their most terrifying nightmares comes to life. Focusing on the youngsters filters out all of the deeper meaning in the way Pennywise terrorizes the group and reduces the film to a rather generic horror movie — a very good one, as long as you aren’t comparing the film to the book.
The one element that works with “It,” even in the abridged version, is the sense of loneliness and helplessness that the friends — who call themselves the Losers’ Club — face. They all live in a world where the adults are either oblivious to what’s happening or are so twisted in their own minds that they are doing more harm to their children than any creepy, sewer-living clown could do.
Pennywise is terrifying, but he isn’t the biggest monster in the film. The story thread that follows Beverly (Sophia Lillis) dealing with her overly aggressive father is chilling to watch unfold. The only way the story could have been improved (as anyone who has read the book can tell you) is if the story had been expanded to show the aftermath of Beverly’s abusive home life.
The parents had to be either absentee or unhinged for the actions of the Losers’ Club to stay within the parameters of logic. The children all witness unholy things — perpetrated both by Pennywise and others living in the small community of Derry, Maine — but never have the option of turning to adults for help.
Director Andy Muschietti (“Mama”) delivers the script by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman (based on the novel by King) in less of a horror-film manner and more like what would happen if a murderous clown showed up to pursue the “Stand By Me” gang.
He lets the tale unfold in the same kind of smalltown quietness that Steven Spielberg has used so well. Muschietti exploits the unrealistic quaintness to make the madness happening to the young friends an even starker contrast to their real world.
The director gets great performances by all cast members, from the heartsick Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) to the germophobe Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer). These young performers manage to play their characters as heroes without relinquishing the elements that make them seem like the kids next door.
Viewers’ level of enjoyment of “It” will depend on their familiarity with the source material. Not knowing the book makes enjoying the well-made standard horror story easier; knowing what the story could have been but isn’t is the stuff of the complaints with past King adaptations.
That’s “It.”