Stephen King’s ‘It’ Is Truly Scary And Fun

Stephen King’s It is truly scary, entertaining and fun. The story takes place in a small country town in Maine (Stephen King’s home state) and centers around a group of savvy kids around 12 years old. The six boys and one girl are alienated from the town, their parents, and teachers while they confront a force that returns every 27 years and preys on people’s fears –  It has been taking the souls of children since 1901.

This film is a remake of the 1990 television mini-series adapted from Stephen King’s novel. The story revolves around a predatory shapeshifter alien who has the ability to transform itself into its prey’s worst fears allowing it to exploit the phobias of its victims. It mostly takes the form of a sadistic wisecracking clown named Pennywise . Everyone in this film is mean including the bullies who constantly attack the kids. I think that was to make the kids personalities stand out more.

Although there are some bloody scenes they are far between allowing time for story and character development. The kids were all excellent and very realistic. Their characters were readily identifiable. They all see different things happening to them and then find it is a mind trip, but when they start putting the pieces together and do some research they find out that this has reoccurred every 27 years and ends with the taking of the souls of missing children. This group of kids then vows to put an end to it.

The shapeshifter is truly evil in more ways than one and lives in the old haunted house in the town and roams through the sewers of the town.

There are plenty of creepy passages and rooms in the house and plenty of sewer romps in here also. It can extend its’ mouth to reveal what looks like long steel pointed sharp teeth and can swallow a whole face which it tried to do with one of their pals. It also sprouts large spider-like claws when it wants to and has various stringy things shoot out of its’ body tangling its’ victims up in.

Although this film is well done and a big hit and making lots of money I couldn’t help but think I’ve seen this all before. When the kids find out it is using them against each other and preys on their fears, they decide not to show it any fear to defeat it. I couldn’t help but think of an old Star Trek episode where a force enters the enterprise when they are meeting with the Klingons and forces the crew of the Enterprise and Klingons to war with each other and gets its’ strength from their anger. When they discover this they show the force they are wise to it and stop being angry and it goes away. The same thing happened here. Some of the effects I’ve seen before too such as an entire room becoming covered in blood and the way blood oozes up through the drain boards in the floor. But overall it’s a good movie and lots of fun, good scares and worth seeing.

Check out this creepy trailer from It.