31 Days, 31 Screams: A New Beginning- Day 9 (It Chapter One)

MFW I have to watch It.

Ahahah. Oh, FUCK. I certainly got my wish for an actually scary King adaptation, huh? I covered the book of this, oh so briefly, in the very first marathon. I am going to make a bold declaration right now. I will never, on this blog, cover the TV miniseries adaptation of this book. Many will mock it, post funny gifs of its monster clown, and move on. For me this is an active haunting. I am haunted by that goofy fucking monster clown. I'm not fucking around for a bit here, either. That adaptation and anything to do with it are as near an honest-to-God trigger as I have. You would think, then, that would make this movie a risk to my mental health and general wellbeing. Well, no. Turns out only that one specific monster clown sets me off, and not the one from the cinematic remake. Just makes Googling for it a non-starter, is all. Or online shopping. I had to pick this movie and the next part of it up at a Wal-Mart in August for this, because I just knew if I try to Youtube or Amazon them the algorithm is going to shove the other monster clown into my fucking face and set me off. Even that's a risk these days, as last Halloween at a Wal-Mart for a spooky season marquee they had that monster clown up there. I'm rambling. Let's talk about this movie.

It's genius. Thanks to the trauma, this story's always had a certain fascination for me. Like The Dark Tower before it, its gonzo mysticism and karmic destiny drew me in when I got the bravery to read it at 18. Can we be honest about the book itself, though? It's a mess. King's substance abuse problems are well known around the time, and while he made very good popular horror art, this is a bit of a mess. The 2017 film only covers the parts with the kids, but it nevertheless makes some very key decisions in order to make the story really sparkle and shine today. The lesser of these is updating the setting, which is just a simple sliding time scale owing to the 30 years since book publication and film release. Turning 1958 into 1989 just makes sense if you want a modern-day adaptation. The second choice deals with the nightmares the titular monster clown torments our protagonists with, and this also ties in with the 1989 setting; using restraint and going with an easy common theme.

Oh, let's face it. With all your Ready Player Ones and forever reboots of old 80's movies, there's a version of this movie that's just so fucking easy to make. A version of this movie set in 1989 that plasters references to pop culture of the time in every facet of the movie; foreground, background, dialogue... and form of nightmare for the monster clown. The original book was awash with old 50's monster movie nightmares, from Frankenstein to Creature From The Black Lagoon to the fucking Crawling Eye. It would have been just so fucking easy to shell out for some 80's slasher villains, a Jason or a Freddy or some other popular shit. They didn't do that. There's some background 80's movie references, some New Kids On The Block gags, and Street Fighter 1. That's all you got for your 80's nostalgia.

More important are the nightmares, and what they represent. They actually represent something other than gonzo mysticism as filtered by a boomer in the 80's who's coked off his fucking gourd at the typewriter. I poke at Mr. King, but a lot of this is in the original book. It's just buried under the mountain of coke, and the adaptation sweeps it all away to get at the heart of the matter: Fear, trauma, and symbolism. Ideas that hold a karmic destiny in the book like "Derry is It" just become what they meant to represent: a shitty little town which lets bad things happen. The horrific visages the monster clown taunts our protagonist with are their own fears and traumas; a creepy painting bitch representing Stan's fear of letting his father down, the hair in Bev's sink representing her fear of her father's protectiveness, the gross leper Eddie sees his fear of disease. 

Bill's trauma is most sketched out, the trauma of losing his brother. (We see this happen in an absolute horrific scene that fucked with me when I first saw it) The trauma of loss, the refusal to accept his kid brother is dead. The monster clown taunts him with this repeatedly, but by joining forces with his friends and killing that fucking clown, he can accept it and move on. He can heal. They all can heal. There are other gonzo choices in adaptation. like making the dead kids the monster clown takes literally float. I always assumed the infamous "we all float down here" just meant "ha ha ha I'm gonna kill you and your dead body will float in the sewer water", but they decided to go with actual literal floating kids. Okay. I'm really going on, but this is a fantastic adaptation that cuts to the heart of the book. Will the second half live up to the first? I hope so, 'cause it's almost three fucking hours long.