31 Days, 31 Screams: A New Beginning- Day 10 (It Chapter Two)

A mood while watching.

And now, the conclusion. This pair of writeups is actually the first time I'm watching the new It films back to back like this. Up until now I'd only seen them once each, when they first came out on physical media and I could rent them at the store. You know, for reasons I've already alluded to. Okay then. What do we have here in this madcap conclusion that reaches Endgame levels of... well, look at the image to your right? Same stuff, different flavor. The opening's horrific in its own way too real way, a brutal assault on a gay couple which ends in nightmare monster clown chomping. Just as horrific if it's set in 1984 as it is in 2016. How uncomfy. From there, we get adult Bill Denbrough and the director of the adaptation of a book of his complaining about how his endings suck ass. This is a bit of cheeky metacommentary, as that's a oft-cited complaint of Stephen King books. Fuck's sakes, look at The Dark Tower again. I could spoil how that massive 35 year-long quest ended, but it would take forever to explain and I don't want to. It's not a malicious joke against King, either, as King himself makes a cameo later and repeats the same joke about Bill's books. It's all in good fun and the guy's winking about it. It's cute.

I mentioned before that what I loved about Chapter One was it cut to the heart of the story. It got to a touching and terrifying story of fear and trauma and childhood, and it did so by cutting out all the gonzo weird shit a certain someone wrote under the influence of a substance. With the ending jabs at the top, it's clear that this movie is not going to end by using the ancient Ritual of Chud to conjure the karmic power within the destined Losers granted to them by the cosmic Turtle  Maturin which vomited up the universe. It plays at that, though. Mike Hanlon believes the Ritual is the only thing to stop the monster clown, and to conjure up the power to fuel it our grown-up Losers will have to remember the past. The power of memory was a big big part of the book, and so it is here. This is a story about a bunch of 40 year-olds unearthing their repressed trauma, and both coming to terms with it and healing from it. It does this in the form of a horror story with a monster clown taunting them with spooky nightmares, but that's just the flavor.

Daddy issues, mommy issues, confused sexualities, and the driving grief of losing a loved one. Those are among the repressed fears, and they are confronted and screamed at when they take monster clown form. The movie even deviates from the book a bit by letting Mike go down into the monster clown lair in this version, where in previous canons he was stabbed and put in the hospital. Down in the deep dark recesses of the Id where It lives, the Ritual begins. The totems of repressed fears and anxieties are burned, hands are held, power channeled... and it doesn't fucking work. Get your Turtle mysticism out of here. If you want to beat the monster clown, you're going to really have to work out your shit... and that's just what happens. The most moving moment for me that almost had me crying, in a goddamned horror movie about a monster clown who traumatized me in another form long long ago, was Bill coming to terms with his grief. He faked being sick so he didn't have to play with his little brother, and a monster clown killed the kid. He's been living with that grief for 27 years, and he finally forgives himself for it. It wasn't his fault. A beautiful moment of healing.

Unfortunately there's a monster clown still rampaging with giant spider legs and sickle claws. Rather pressing predicament. The movie briefly brings up the rules of the Old Lore, almost alchemical waffling: the monster clown must abide by the rules of the shape it inhabits. At first, one might expect this to go like the book did; fear creates the shape of the monster while faith creates the thing that can kill it. No. No no. That ending's been dismissed. It sucks, remember? King himself said it, in a different form. The real solution is making the monster clown small. Not by changing his form. By facing your fear and anxiety head-on and telling it to FUCK OFF. You're a GODDAMNED CLOWN! A goof-off! A dumb face-painted fuck for people to laugh at! The friends join together, having faced their worst mental demons, and call it a goddamned clown together, shriveling it to nothing before ripping its heart out and crushing it as one. Fuck. I like this ending a lot more than the Turtle shit. Same flavor of gonzo mysticism, but it means more than muddled Dark Tower references now. That's it. At five hours or so, this is almost as long as The Stand. Unlike The Stand, this shit is good. I will call it the best King adaptation there has been. It even beats Kubrick's Shining, but explaining that will be a mouthful and a half. Let's leave the clown behind, leave our fear behind, and learn and grow from it. Together. 

We could also watch an old 60's sci-fi serial about mind-controlling seaweed.