‘It’ (2017)

King novels typically fall into two modes: novels like “Gerald’s Game” and “Misery” consist of one or two characters alone in a house for 300+ pages, whereas novels like “The Stand” and “It” follow vast casts of characters for 1000+ pages as they deal with internal and external trials and tribulations. However, King’s imagination, ambition and humanity are on display at all times despite the number listed on the bottom right-hand corner of the final page.

In his novel “It,” Stephen King explores real horrors such as racism, homophobia, misogyny, and mental and physical abuse, through a filter that is at times surreal and supernatural, and at other times brutally realistic. There is an inherent cinematic quality to many King novels, but “It” is the adaptation that I have been waiting to see for what feels like my entire adult life. As a constant reader who also has seen most of the screen adaptations of his work, I can say cleanly that we now have the definitive film of King’s terrifying, cosmic coming-of-age epic.

Updated from the late 1950’s of King’s novel to the late 1980’s, director Andy Muschietti’s “It” unfolds as an unflinching coming-of-age story about a group of outcast kids who deem themselves “The Losers’ Club,” who form a special bond to face their worst fears, and track down and destroy the eternal evil that lurks below their city of Derry, Maine.

The film opens with a tour de force opening sequence in which little Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) meets a cruel fate during a rainstorm after his paper boat sails into a storm drain. His big brother, Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), makes the boat for him as a gift, and the two share a tender scene before Bill sends him out to sail the boat along the flooded street gutters.

As Georgie kneels down to peer down into the sewer, two glowing eyes open and a clown emerges from the damp shadows, greeting the boy with a warm, almost cartoonish “Hiya, Georgie.” The clown cheerfully introduces itself as “Pennywise the Dancing Clown” (Bill Skarsgård).

“It” gets off to such an impressive start with this sequence. Muschietti manages make what is arguably the most iconic scene from King’s novel feel fresh, unnerving, and unpredictable—in an interesting twist, Georgie’s fate remains unknown to the citizens of Derry, as his body is never officially recovered.

The film keeps up this momentum as it transitions to the summer after Georgie’s disappearance. Bill spends his days hanging out with his friends Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard), Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer), and Stan Uris (Wyatt Oleff). Richie is a loudmouth smartass, Eddie is an over-medicated germophobe, and Stan is a timid neat freak.

We also are introduced to the new kid in town, Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), who is terrorized frequently by a gang of bullies led by Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton). Ben has a serious crush on Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis), who refuses to let her abusive father or the bullies at school break her spirit.

We also meet the town butcher’s son, Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs), who struggles with having to kill sheep as part of the family business—they use a small gun that fires out a steel rod through the animal’s skull and into its brain, killing it instantly. After all seven of the “losers” are united, each of them reveals that they have had some kind of terrifying personal encounter with Pennywise, who has the power to shape shift into your greatest fear. Ben’s love for the library comes into play here, as he recounts to his friends all of his research into Derry’s sordid history.

Determined to learn the fate of his brother and the countless other missing children of Derry, Bill emerges as a natural leader—he develops a plan to hunt down Pennywise and, with the help of his friends, destroy It once and for all.

Like all of the best King adaptations, “It” has a stellar creative team behind the camera that understands and embraces the source material, but also contributes a strong, confident style that is unique from King’s approach. Muschietti directs the hell out of Gary Dauberman’s screenplay that, like Pennywise himself, existed in many different forms before evolving into this permutation. Many thanks to credited screenwriters Cary Fukunaga (“Beasts of No Nation,” “True Detective”) and Chase Palmer for taking a swing at adapting the story first and pushing it closer to the place where we are now.

Dauberman’s draft is an extraordinarily streamlined version of the children’s half of King’s story that still preserves the soul of the novel—it also sprinkles in plenty of deep-cut details for fans of the book to savor, which further shows how this team has really done its homework. Pieced together with Muschietti’s confident, stylish directing, pitch perfect casting, and a fantastically detailed and imaginative production design, “It” achieves the honor of being one of the best big studio horror movies to come out in years.

To adapt “It” into a successful film cannot have been an easy process. The one rendition that we have had to rely on for the last 27 years has been the 1990 Tommy Lee Wallace directed miniseries, starring the incomparable Tim Curry as Pennywise. Taken as a whole, it has not aged well and offers only a handful of treasures to us now, including Curry’s iconic performance.

Now we have Skarsgård’s performance, which is equal-parts animalistic, maniacal, erratic and childish. His is a completely different take on the character that carries shades of Heath Ledger’s Joker, Freddy Krueger, and a creepy Jim Henson Muppet. His volatility exponentially ratchets up the tension, and leaves us wondering when Pennywise—or one of Its other forms—is going to appear.

And then there are the young actors playing the “Losers’ Club,” who are firing on all cylinders at all times in this movie. The VIP’s have to be Wolfhard, who goes full trash mouth and kills it with the best one-liners, and Lillis, who brings Bev Marsh’s power, wit and general badassery to life in a way we’ve never gotten to experience before now. Everyone is terrific, and as we see these kids facing the demons of growing up, as well as the literal demon Pennywise, we believe them. That’s half the battle, for once we feel the pain and desire of the characters, the scares come and our skin crawls appropriately.

★★★★  (out of 4)