To celebrate spooky season this year I read some scary stories, and decided to finally watch the movie adapting Stephen King’s It (from 2017) and It Chapter Two (from 2019). Despite being old enough to have watched it on TV when it originally aired in 1990, I decided not to check out the Tim Curry version. I chose It because I knew it was a classic horror story from King, the horror master (whose work I have neither read nor watched very much of), yet one that wasn’t going to be too scary or gruesome for a chicken like me. (I still discredit King’s 1982 cheesy horror anthology film Creepshow for having traumatized me and kept me away from ANY horror for nearly two decades!) Watching the two It films was really fun. They are a definite set as the story follows a group of kids in small town Maine in 1989, who are terrorized by a demonic clown who torments them with their own fears, along with those same kids as grown adults 27 years later when the clown returns to their town. I believe the book flashes back from the 80s to the 50s, but the movies cleverly split the timeframe, keeping things set in the “present” for both parts.

The first thing to notice about this story is how obviously it resembles the Netflix series Stranger Things. Both are set in a small American town where a bunch of kids in the 80s have to fight off a monstrous creature who lives and kills around their town. The kids in both stories are a bunch of unpopular nerds whose bonds of friendship give them strength. Even the demographic mix of each group are very similar, with a bunch of White teen boys, a Black boy, and one girl. There’s even one of the same actors: Finn Wolfhard (how did he not get his two roles confused is a mystery) in both productions. There are also plenty of arch bullies in both stories — hard to say which ones were worse; they are all so violent, cruel and mean. Also, like all good movie monsters (especially from the 80s), there was an element of fear and trauma that was invoked for the kids to work through in order to fight and survive. In the case of It, each kid has something very traumatic that they have to emotionally overcome which comes back repeatedly, used by the clown Pennywise to tempt and torment the children. I really enjoyed this aspect to the movies. Not because it torments children, but I thought they did a good job of building these kids’ characters and how their lives were difficult, and used terror to show how trauma and loss affected them. The kid actors were very good. I thought they felt realistic, like carefree 80s kids (Yes, I was one myself), even though they had been through more grief than most kids really did (their town was notorious for missing kids and death, though no one really talked about it, just put up Missing Persons posters). The first film spent more time expanding each character’s story, with their families or their bullies, or whatever circumstances they were in. Of course there was a good balance of demonic clown shenanigans, but it wasn’t the bulk of the story. The main thrust was getting to know these kids and watching them get to know each other, banter, and form close friendships in adverse situations.

Surprisingly, though It Chapter Two showed these characters as adults, and featured some popular and good actors such as James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, and Bill Hader, there was actually a lot less focus on who their characters had become. The second movie starts with a bunch of “catch up” scenes where we get snapshots of each character’s life now, but after they are summoned back to small town Derry, they don’t really talk very much about their adult lives. Maybe because there’s some kind of supernatural amnesia that they need to work through, they seem to care more about remembering 27 years prior than responding like their current selves. This was a bit of a miss, in my opinion. When Pennywise starts to come after each of the adults, they are dealing with their childhood traumas again. It’s almost as if the decades had not even happened, and they just got older without maturing or getting wiser (even certain love triangles are frustratingly resurrected). Nevertheless, it was good to see the characters that I had just gotten to know from the first film now as adults, with adult dialogue. If anyone is going to follow my lead, I recommend watching both movies back to back. You won’t feel the time pass, which is also how things seem to have been for the characters themselves.

When it comes to monsters, how does Pennywise/It compare? I have to say that it’s not the most inventive monster ever. He’s definitely iconic, with his funny yet gruesome makeup, and of course the red balloon. I think the demogorgon/mind flayer from Stranger Things was more creatively designed, but not as useful for telling the story of the kids and their traumas and fears. Pennywise seems to have inexplicable and random abilities that are way over-powered. He can basically alter reality around him, show up virtually anywhere, and make you see anything. He can also, apparently, possess people somewhat permanently. When a creature with such limitless powers coming after a bunch of kids, there seems no possible way for them to win even once, let alone twice (Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but come on! Whaddya expect?). Pennywise kind of becomes an all-purpose horror trope, and there are scenes that go in all those expected directions: from boogeymen, to carnivals and funhouse mirrors, to dark basements, to gouts of blood, to being buried alive, to scary children, to spiders, to flying creatures, and (obviously) creepy clowns. So as a storytelling device, Pennywise is all-purpose. It’s rare that he himself is scary (though he does have very sharp teeth), but it’s rather the nightmare imagery that he conjures that can be kind of scary. The other problem with monsters that have very few limits and no real rules about them, defeating them also seems kind of arbitrary. That’s not to say that either movie ended unsatisfactorily, because the endings both focused more on the friends and how they triumphed together. But all the logic and reasons why they won were kind of nonsense.

I think I liked the first film a little more, since the adult versions felt more like characters that were dropped in from other movies or tv shows. I spent most of the time trying to find their younger selves within the portrayals and the dialogue from each of the adults. I’m surprised that, other than Wolfhard, none of the child actors appear to have had much of a career (though maybe that’s a good thing and they’ve lived normal lives). If you’re going to watch just one of the films, the first one is better, but they work best as a pair. In the end, I had a good time for spooky season, watching these two films that were not very scary and pretty fun, heart warming and satisfying. (4 out of 5 for both Its)