IT (2017)

IT (2017)

Director: Andy Muschietti

Cast: Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Bill Skarsgard

Every generation gets their boogeyman and it looks like this generation is getting Pennywise, The Dancing Clown. Yes my friends, this killer clown from outer space has earned his rank amongst the horror elite. Pennywise is the brainchild of Stephen King who first introduced him with his hugely successful novel ‘IT’, which premiered way back in 1986. The book was then adapted into a television miniseries, where it frightened a whole generation of 90’s kids (myself included) thanks in no small part to Tim Curry’s brilliant interpretation of the title character. Now Pennywise has been resurrected via a theatrically released film. Considering how many terrible remakes we get on a yearly basis, I was hesitant to accept this one, as I always am when they want to mess around with a classic. Would Bill Skarsgard, the actor portraying Pennywise do the character justice, or was he just going to clone Tim Curry’s take on it? The same trepidation went for the director, Andy Muschietti, the director behind Mama (2003), which I’ve yet to see. Would he have what it takes to make a truly frightening movie or would this be another watered down “Horror Movie” afraid to truly scare us?

In case you’ve never seen the mini-series or read King’s book IT is all about this town in which kids keep disappearing for no apparent reason. A group of nerds and outcast who call themselves “The Losers” notice what is happening and decide to do something about it. Their explorations lead them to a discovery: there’s a strange, evil clown kidnapping the kids! Can they confront this evil entity and stop the disappearance’s from happening?

My big preoccupation with this movie was whether it was going to be truly horrifying or not. I’ve grown to learn that in modern Hollywood, an ‘R’ rating doesn’t necessarily equal intensity. Sometimes it’s just a hook to make you think the film you are about to watch is going to be “edgy” then you realize you’ve been had. In the case of ‘IT’ I am happy to say that this is a truly hardcore horror movie not afraid to shock us. In the first ten minutes, the film really shows us its fangs and lets us know it isn’t fooling around, if you stay, you are going to be horrified! So if you can’t take the heat, you better get out of that kitchen! The scares are well orchestrated, it is gory, it is intense and freaking Pennywise is a memorable boogyman! A memorable villain! My hats down to Bill Skarsgard for delivering a truly nuanced performance. Pennywise’s movements and facial gestures truly delivered a bone chilling villain, everything about him feels strange or “off”, his evil is felt in every part of the performance. Loved this villain, and I love the fact that he really goes for the jugular when the movie turns up the heat.

But apart from a strong, memorable villain, which by the way I’ve been dying to see in a film for a while now, we get a group of young characters who deliver believable performances that manage to capture that innocent age when everything is new, when you kiss for the first time, when you develop friendships that will last you a life time, and when you first start standing up to your parents. I’ve always liked that about ‘IT’, that idea that this group of friends truly care for each other, that feeling that you’re with people you can really trust in. This of course is something present in many of Stephen King’s stories like Stand By Me (1986) and Dreamcatcher (2003). King loves to tell stories of friends or a community coming together to defeat an ultimate evil, so he takes his time in writing situations where that bond, that love between characters is truly felt. Kudos to the director for seeing that and bringing it to the big screen. By the way, this film does something that all good remakes do, it gives us enough new elements so it doesn’t feel like we’re watching the same film over again.

What I loved the most about this adaptation is that it didn’t feel like a cheap horror film. It doesn’t feel like it was made by an idiot trying to scare us with cheap scares. Nope, this is a well-crafted horror film that looks beautiful, is truly frightening and has characters you care about, all without losing its edge and remembering its mission: to make you squirm in your seat. So yes my dear readers, Andy Muschietti and crew aimed to do make a truly memorable horror film and not something that you’d forget or worse yet, wish you’d never spent your time and your money on. This one was special in my book. It's filled with a lot of great moments, I think what Muschietti was aiming for was a roller coaster ride of horror and he achieved it. I was so impressed that I will be checking out Muschietti’s Mama (2003). Bottom line is IT is a fun ride, and should be experienced in a movie theater. By the looks of it, a sequel is assured, which is supposed to take place 27 years later, when the kids have all grown up. Here’s hoping they don’t give us a cheap ass sequel and maintain the same high level of quality with the next film. This film surpassed my expectations, and that’s a lot to say because normally new horror films fail to amaze me. IT was jaw-droppingly good!

Rating: 5 out of 5 

Silver Bullet (1985)

Silver Bullet (1985)

Director: Daniel Attias

Cast: Corey Haim, Gary Busey, Everett McGill

Silver Bullet is a werewolf film that was released a few years after the success of two far superior werewolf films, An American Werewolf in London (1981) and The Howling (1981), the two films that all other werewolf films must look up to. And while Joe Dante’s The Howling is a nifty werewolf flick with great effects by the always amazing Rob Bottin, I have to say that as far as I’m concerned, no werewolf movie out there has been able to surpass what John Landis and crew achieved in An American Werewolf in London; the challenge to beat An American Werewolf in London in terms of makeup effects work is still up and running. The film is a great amalgamation of comedy, great effects, horrifying moments and a great story; it’s simply too good of a movie. It’s incredible that with the advancement of technology in the world of special effects, no computer generated images have been able to top the genius that make up effects guru Rick Baker achieved in An American Werewolf in London; which is why the werewolves in Silver Bullet pale so brightly when compared to Baker’s creations.  Still, a werewolf movie does not run on special effects alone, so how was Silver Bullet as a whole, especially when we take in consideration that it’s a Stephen King adaptation?

The world of cinematic Stephen King adaptations is an uneven one. Some are amazing like The Shining (1980) and Pet Sematary (1989), while others are mediocre, like Maximum Overdrive (1986) and The Lawnmower Man (1992), to name just a few examples. Is Silver Bullet one of the good ones? Well, it’s a strange sort of film in the sense that it seems to been aimed at kids, but it’s a hard ‘R’ filled with lots of gore. It feels like it’s aimed at kids because number one, it has a kid in the starring role in the form of a pre-teen Corey Haim, who plays Marty Coslaw, a kid bound to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Marty knows there’s a werewolf prowling about killing his neighbors in grizzly ways, but of course, same as in every single horror film of the 80’s, nobody believes the kid. The film even feels like it’s a family film, because at its core it’s about a kid’s relationship with his crazy, yet lovable, drunkard uncle. The whole film is tinged with that gee-whiz 12 year old mentality that so many of Stephen King’s novels are known for. King loves to center his horror stories around children. He did it in Silver Bullet (1985), It (1990) and again in Dreamcatcher (2003). King connects horror with childhood, which makes sense. It’s at that age that we are most susceptible to being scared; we know so little of the world. The problem with mixing children and horror on films is that your target audience becomes children, but then if you’re making a horror movie for kids it can’t be too scary or you risk getting an ‘R’ rating and losing your target audience…and then the film becomes a marketing nightmare. Who do you sell the movie to, kids or adults? This is probably the reason why Silver Bullet died a quick death at the box office.

I haven’t read The Cycle of the Werewolf, the novel on which Silver Bullet is based on, but I have seen the illustrations that accompany the novel, namely, Bernie Wrightson’s amazing art work. The sad part is that the werewolves in the film pale in comparison even when compared to Wrightson’s illustrations! Who’s to blame for the underwhelming werewolves on this film? Well, none other than Carlo Rambaldi, the Italian special effect guru best known for creating E.T. for Spielberg’s E.T. The  Extraterrestrial (1982). He also created the creatures seen in David Lynch’s Dune (1984). Rambaldi’s creature work has always been a bit uneven, on some films it can be amazing, like for example the Alien in Alien (1979), while on others not so great, like for example, his work on King Kong Lives (1986) is actually laugh inducing! For some reason, this is one of the films where his work was lackluster, the werewolf’s head looks as big as a refrigerator. If the filmmakers had employed the likes of Stan Winston, Rick Baker or Rob Bottin, this film might have turned out a bit better in terms of the werewolf effects.

Above Bernie Wrightson's illustrations for King's Cycle of the Werewolf, below, Carlo Rambaldi's werewolf for Silver Bullet (1985)

Werewolf effects aside, it’s not the worst werewolf movie I’ve ever seen; that would be Wes Craven’s Cursed (2005). No, Silver Bullet is actually watchable. Corey Haim and Gary Busey play likable characters who live in their own little world. Busey’s Uncle Red is always saying one liners and silly jokes to keep Marty’s spirits up and Marty, even though he is disabled, hasn’t given up on life and is actually very gung-ho about living it. The whole film, like many of King’s stories takes place in small town U.S.A., with a whole slew of townsfolk archetypes like the town asshole, the nice Sheriff who is lenient with the people he’s known his whole life, the violent macho man, the old lady, the unfaithful wife, the natural leader, all these archetypes that tend to inhabit Kings stories. So you definitely feel like you are watching a Stephen King movie. In terms of themes, well, the film does have a thing or two to say about catholic priests who like to chase little boys. Ultimately, I think what hurts this movie the most is the lack of direction. It has that television show feel to it, there’s nothing spectacular or eye catching about the way it was filmed, the direction is actually very banal. This was director Daniel Attias first and only cinematic effort, the rest of his career has been spent directing television, so I guess that explains a lot. Not one of King’s worst adaptations, it certainly deserves a watch if you’re a werewolf or Stephen King fan.

Rating: 3 out of 5

    

The Dark Half (1993)

Title: The Dark Half (1993)

Director: George Romero

Writer: George Romero (based on the novel by Stephen King)

Cast: Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, Michael Rooker

Review:

So The Dark Half is one of those George Romero movies that doesn’t get talked about much. Like Monkey Shines (1988) and Martin (1977), The Dark Half tends to get overshadowed (as most Romero films that don’t deal with zombies do) by Romero’s living dead films. But in all honesty, I think this movie deserves a whole lot more attention then it gets, simply because it’s not a film one can easily lump amongst Romero’s bad films, like Bruiser (2000) or Season of the Witch (1972) for example.

Hey, Thad just so happens to be giving a class on the films theme! What a coincidense!

The Dark Half tells the tale of Thad Beaumont, a writer who has been working under the pseudonym George Stark so that he can sell books and make a living. You see, he writes trashy violence filled novels under this name so that his real name isn’t tarnished. Kind of like the same way that Stephen King would write under the name Richard Bachman, but more on that later. So anyhow, Thad decides to kill off his pseudonym and tell the world that George Star and Thad Beaumont are one and the same. Problem is, when he does this, George Stark, basically Thad’s alter ego comes alive and starts killing off people. Everyone thinks that it’s Thad doing the killing, when in fact it is his alter ego/persona George Stark. Will Thad be able to stop Stark? Will he ever confront his dark side and win?

This film marks one of many collaborations between Stephen King and George Romero. Their first collaboration was Creepshow (1982). They worked together yet again on Creepshow 2 (1987). The Dark Half is an interesting picture because it mixes the best of both of these brilliant horror oriented masterminds. On The Dark Half, we get a lot of the themes that we can come to expect from a Stephen King novel/film. If you notice, a lot of Stephen King stories revolve around the life of a writer, in this way, King mirrors his own life in his work. Misery, Desperation and even IT all have writers in them. And in many of these stories, the writer is always confronted with the fear of someone hounding him, like in Misery (1990) for example where the writer is assaulted and kidnapped by one of his own rabid fans, forcing him to write the story she wants to see.

The film was based on the Stephen King novel of the same name

On The Dark Half, Thad Beaumont is the writer. And he writes these violent novels by using the pseudonym George Starks. In a way, Thad uses Stark and these violent novels in a cathartic manner, exorcising his inner demons, his dark violent side. The film explains we all have this dark side, the side we don’t show to everybody. Thad is also a university teacher, and on his classes he explains that a writer needs to let their super-ego, the dark secret self out when they write. A writer’s job is to set this inner persona loose and let it go wild and free. And of course this is all true. A writer does need to let go of inhibitions when he or she writes. On The Dark Half, this secret persona becomes real when Thad decides to eliminate him. So suddenly we are in a story where Thad has an evil version of himself doing all sorts of twisted and perverted deeds. Problem is, all these evil deeds are blamed on Thad.

George Stark's one evil S.O.B!

I actually enjoy it when he does something other then zombie films. I’m a fan of Monkey Shines, I love Martin. And I love The Dark Half. It stars Timothy Hutton as Thad Beaumont, and it’s a good Timothy Hutton performance. He plays a double role, the good side of Thad and his dark half, George Stark. It is said that Timothy Hutton was not easy to work with during this production, that he and George had differences. Hutton even quit the film for a few days during the middle of the film! But whatever, I say that this all translated rather well on film. Hutton seems intense and evil when he is playing Stark, who by the way has a little bit of Elvis Presley in him as well. He constantly hums Elvis’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” all through out the film, another sign that Stephen King is mirroring himself with this story. Stephen Kings affection for the King is well known. By the way, King himself says that this story is semi-autobiographical because it has to do with a story that forced him to reveal his Richard Bachman pseudonym to the world. When King wrote under the Bachman pseudonym, his novels were darker and violent, and that’s because no one knew he was Bachman as well. As a writer, he would go nuts! Until he was forced to come out to the world and say the truth: that King and Bachman were the same guy. After that, he wrote The Dark Half. I will say this about The Dark Half, it has more King then Romero in it that’s for sure. So maybe that’s what some critics mean when they say this isn’t so much a Romero film.

The film was plagued with production woes. Aside from the differences between Romero and Hutton, Orion Pictures was going bankrupt, and so the film was stuck in limbo for well over two years after completion. It didn’t really make its money back at the box office, making only 10 million vs. its 15 million budget. But I’m sure the films failure at the box office had more to do with the way it was marketed, then the film itself. I recently saw it and didn’t find many faults in it. I mean, the only negative side to the whole thing is how to explain George Stark manifesting himself in the real world. I mean, okay, Thad Beaumont had an unborn twin brother lodged inside his brain when he was a kid, but it was surgically removed. My only question for King and Romero is how do they explain a fictional character manifesting in the real world like that? How did George Stark come to be? I mean, Stark was simply a pseudonym, a name. That’s all. Stark was really Thad all along. Is Stark some sort of dark spirit? What exactly is Stark? It is never explained. But I let that go because within the fantasy of the film it works. I mean, I get the symbolisms and what the story is trying to say; it’s just that when it comes down to logic, there really isn’t any there. That’s about as negative as I can get about this movie.

Nightmares can be a bitch in a George Romero film!

This is not really a whodunit, because pretty early on we know its not Stark doing the killing, we know about Thad’s dark side pretty early on. If anything, some might think that it isn’t that fun learning the films “twist” so early in the film, but that’s just fine with me. The Dark Half isn’t a Shyamalan film, wanting to wow you with a twist ending. Romero isn’t concerned with that. This film isn’t even a gore fest like many of Romero’s zombie films, the blood letting and gore on this film is suggested and happens off-screen most of the time. No my friends, The Dark Half is more of a psychological film, a symbolic film. It asks us to deal with our dark side, confront it, and eliminate it if need be. It’s interesting that Thad decides to do this so he can protect his family from harm, in this way, revealing to us its ultimate message.

Rating: 4 out of 5