It could be easy to chalk up this clamor to nostalgia: Muschietti’s choice to relocate the sprawling book’s first timeline from the late 1950s to 1989 caters to that impulse (the second timeline will constitute an entirely separate film “chapter” to come), and the timing of It’s arrival, between seasons of its spiritual successor Stranger Things, doesn’t hurt any. Judging by its record-breaking trailer, It is the most highly anticipated film of the fall of 2017. It markets itself as nostalgia, but it’s an allegory for 2017
That’s because Muschietti understands that Pennywise, in all his Lovecraftian incomprehensibility, is only a symptom of the larger evil in King’s mythos - the darkness that lurks in the hearts of power-hungry men and causes society’s foundations to rot. But while Curry’s iconic performance overshadowed everything that was mediocre about the 1990 miniseries, Skarsgård’s Pennywise and the many traditional horror scares he engenders aren’t remotely the most interesting parts of this layered, knowing film. And he’s suitably creepy in Muschietti’s film, menacing and enigmatic enough to satisfy even the most die-hard It fans and Tim Curry loyalists. Driven by Bill’s quest to know Georgie’s fate, the Losers, drawn together partly out of friendship and partly out of desperation, begin a heroes’ journey to vanquish It once and for all - a journey that ultimately spans nearly three decades in King’s novel. The Losers Club are the only people in Derry who seem to be awake and attuned to the sheer horror of the town’s rising number of missing children and a death rate that’s six times higher than the national average. The events of It kick off when Bill’s little brother Georgie has a shudder-inducing run-in with Pennywise the Clown ( Bill Skarsgård), the shapeshifting form of fear itself that terrorizes and ultimately devours Derry’s children. It’s this sinister reality that’s lurking in It’s corners come for the fathomless cosmic evil, stay for the reminder that in real life, evil is nearly always mundane.
But while the bullies are terrifying, in King’s worlds, adults are always worse, exercising terrifying strangleholds over the lives of children. Stephen King is known for filling his books with bullied outcasts, from Carrie to Stand By Me - and like each of those stories, the kids in It inhabit an R-rated space that’s typically reserved for adults in the movies, a space full of F-words and violence. This is a moniker taken from King’s book that’s not so much announced onscreen as it is implied with every awkward social exchange, every insult, every punch thrown by an oversized bully - and Derry abounds with bullies. Together, they form a charming, funny, and pure-hearted misfit ensemble: the Losers Club. Rounding out the group are smart-mouthed Ritchie ( Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard), incessant talker Eddie ( Jack Dylan Grazer), the reluctant Stan ( Wyatt Oleff), and Mike ( Chosen Jacobs), who as a homeschooled black kid is the biggest outsider of them all. They include Jaeden Lieberher as Bill, the de facto leader who grieves his little brother’s mysterious abduction Sophia Lillis as Beverly, the group’s only girl and shy Ben ( Jeremy Ray Taylor). In It, the titular evil entity returns every 27 years, and the group who must face it (this time around) is a band of children on the brink of adolescence. It is as much about the specter of real-life terror as it is the supernatural And It pulls off the feat of making Derry’s symbolic decay and encroaching evil a metaphor for the times in which we live, while still delivering the classic coming-of-age fable King fans know and love. This truth is what makes Derry arguably the most quintessential fictional town in America.
King knows, too, that “evil” isn’t about larger-than-life acts, but about the everyday callousness, abuse of power, and indifference to abuse of power that humans practice as they go about their lives.
As the keeper of our horror-stricken national conscience, Stephen King knows better than anyone that evil is generational, that it must be routed again and again. But if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that time is a flat circle and that evil continually resurfaces, armed with ever more powerful weapons. There’s a common mantra that circulates within social movements that we just have to wait for evil to “die out,” a pervasive belief that every generation inevitably advances society forward over the dead bodies of those who were holding it back. Vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark
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