Maybe it helped I had not read the book or seen the 1990 miniseries, maybe it hadn’t.
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Certainly the hype attracted the crowds for the story that has done more for coulrophobia than any other.
And no, coulrophobia is not the fear of cabbage or cauliflower but the fear of clowns though if the appetite for Stephen King’s It is anything to go by, people love a good jolt from a not-so-jovial jester.
It’s breaking box office records everywhere and the biggest audience I’ve seen at Mount Isa Cinema was in the house for Stephen King’s It last week.
The first scene certainly set us up for the night and I never want to look down a drain again in case some malevolence in make-up is lurking below ready to rip my arm off or worse.
Bill Skarsgard (son of well known Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard) makes the movie starring as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the “It” of the title.
He is all crumbling forehead and dribbling mouth and if looks could kill, his face was Massacre City.
Tim Curry set the benchmark for evil clowns in the original 1990 TV mini-series but Skarsgard has a menace of his own making and it is impossible to get his horrible face out of mind once it has lodged there.
Not only does It destroy beloved childhood memories of clowns it also does a good job of making balloons look frightening.
Credits to the behind the camera team for this.
But I was far less impressed with the rest of the team in front of the camera.
It was hard to engage with any of the so-called Losers Club, though Sophia Lillis brought a beautiful smile to Bev Marsh (unfortunately the story does not give her much opportunity to smile).
The rest of them were little more than cardboard cutouts and I found their adventures increasingly more far-fetched. Hollywood’s sad tendency to rely on special effects rather than character to advance the story was on evidence here.
In fact I found myself laughing at a couple of moments that were supposed to be scary.
Nonetheless the movie had many genuine jump-out-of-your-skin moments and that’s what people pay the good money for – to have their pants scared off.
And only after the movie did I realise this was only Part 1 of the book and a second part is yet to come.
And if I sound ambivalent about whether I liked it, the proof of the pudding is whether I intend to go to watch Part 2.
The answer: you bet I will. The Losers Club can lose all they like but once inside your head, that damn clown won’t come out.
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
