Dread Architecture
Watching It, our first thought is actually not so much a thought as a plea.
“Do not reach your hand into that storm drain!”
We’re looking down on a suburban street. There’s a pelting rain. A little boy in a yellow raincoat is on his hands and knees, peering into a storm drain in search of his paper boat.
The storm drain is peering back at him, rather hungrily…
We have yet to jump, squeal, or shriek. Already we are transfixed.
There are no gratuitous bumps in the night in It. Every gasp, flinch, and jump is a product of its prelude – the chilling realization that we know exactly what’s coming and we really, really don’t want to see it, except that of course we do.
Hitchcock once illustrated the suspense is a more effective emotional tool than mere surprise by imagining that a bomb had been placed under his table. He explained that an audience would react far more strongly if it already knew the bomb was there when he sat down.
The same dynamic is at work in It, and in many of Stephen King’s books.
It is also the key to adapting his work: focus on the way he builds dread – with the precision of an architect – and try not to get lost explaining the superpowers, premonitions, and other psychic connections that buttress his plots.
Kubrik succeeded because he knew well enough to avoid any deep explanation of what exactly “the shining” was. They say King hated the final result. Yet, The Shining remains by far the most impactful adaptation of his work.
Likewise, this new version of It only makes a partial effort at explaining what exactly “it” is and why “it” seems to make children disappear every 27 years in the small town of Derry.
Although fans of the book may emerge frustrated by the incomplete narrative (a whopping chunk of the book is left out), the movie is well served by a relentless parade of horrors. The more time they spend in exposition, character development, and plot advancement, the more weaknesses of the movie show.
And there are a few, the least impactful and yet most unforgivable of which was the poor CGI we noticed every time the camera lingered too long on certain monsters.
But what nearly caused our eyes to roll up past our eyebrows was the styling. It is so heavy on the Spielberg nostalgia it makes the TV series Stranger Things, reigning champ of 80s fetishism, look like Reservoir Dogs. We groaned a little as the band of kids that make up the movie’s main cast rounded a suburban corner on their Schwinns, a counterfeit John Williams score fluttering in the background. Where do we draw the line between clin d’oeil and knock off?
The throwback is made all the more cumbersome by the fact that the pack of kids here, unlike those in the referenced works (E.T., Stand by Me, The Goonies, and even Stranger Things), fail to achieve any chemistry. Aside from a rather funny litany of “your mom” jokes dished out by the bespectacled joker of the group (Finn Wolfhard), the dialogue never feels natural – we remain acutely aware that these are the words written by an adult holed up in a Studio City bungalow.
The result of all the throwback and weak dialogue is that we lose the sense that these are real people with real emotions - a shame, since the whole point of It is that childhood fears and anxieties are as real as any trauma experienced by adults.
Presumably the sequel will find them all as adults, probably in the late 90s working for dot-com companies. And we’ll pay to see it, too. Because it’s mighty hard to be overly critical of a movie when you’re using your good stone-throwing hand to shield your eyes as clown with worrying sharp teeth tries to lure a little boy into a storm drain.