One, two, the clown will take you. Review of the film ”It”
The first film adaptation of Stephen King's acclaimed work about the evil clown Pennywise , who raids the town of Derry every 27 years, was released in 1990 in the format of a mini-series. It turned out to be so impressive that it brought up a dislike for clowns in a whole generation. Exactly 27 years later, the evil Pennywise is back - this time on the big screens. It's time to be afraid ...The Losers' Club is a group of teenagers who are bullied with enviable consistency by high school students. The guys try to stick together, supporting each other in all sorts of troubles. Bill , the leader of the company, had a younger brother missing nine months ago under mysterious circumstances. Now Bill and his friends periodically experience visions based on fear, pain and frustration. The company decides to find out where the limit of their horrors lies and end their torment. To do this, they need to fight the scary clown Pennywise . Stephen King is the most screened writer of our time. The interest of filmmakers in his works has not faded for forty years. More recently, the author's books formed the basis of the TV series "Under the Dome", "11.22.63" and "Mister Mercedes", and the total number of full-length film adaptations exceeded six dozen. Sometimes you get masterpieces like "Misery", and sometimes you get a complete "Dark Tower". However, success or failure in this case depends only on the skill of the filmmakers.  The path to the second adaptation of It was not smooth and smooth. For a long time, the film was preparing to shoot the overnightly popular Carey Fukunaga. However, when Andres Muschetti sat in the director's chair, the audience's confidence in the success of the venture became much less. Only the fact that Fukunaga remained as a producer gave hope for a positive outcome. The Argentinean Muschetti is no stranger to working on scary films: his horror movie "Mama" successfully grossed a box office ten times the production budget four years ago. Having started filming "It" , the director decided not to reinvent the wheel, but to work according to the canons created a long time ago. Without throwing all the devils out of the snuffbox on the viewer in the very first scenes of the film, Muschetti builds up the atmosphere with inexorable accuracy. It should be noted that he does this masterfully. The further the narrative progresses, the less bright and sunny frames. The closer to the junction, the more there is not enough air. Muschetti perfectly knows how to use sound effects, but every time before scaring the viewer, he methodically exaggerates the colors. A fallen picture, a silhouette flashed the play of chiaroscuro - all this spurs the audience's imagination, forcing them to breathe every other time. And when the time for the screamer finally comes, the person sitting in the hall is already in an extremely agitated state. Thus, the director makes scary not only the key moment, but also the time preceding it.  The director does not forget that it is not a passing horror film that is being filmed, but an adaptation of a cult book. And if so, a considerable amount of time should be devoted to the plot of the original source so that the film becomes a story, and not just a conventional line connecting "boo-effects". Muschetti does not disappoint here either, showing that he knows how to work with dramatic material. In addition, there is not a single sketchy or boring character in the film. The director deftly keeps the viewer's attention on the personal lines of all 7 characters, demonstrating the fear and pain of each character. It is impossible not to mention the teenage actors who got the leading roles. There is a common belief among directors: the most difficult thing is to work with children and animals. However, Muschetti accepted this challenge and won. It is felt that young talents under his sensitive guidance experienced a number of impressions. Jaden Liberer and Sophia Lillis react so naturally to everything that happens to their characters that it's time to ask Muschetti the question: What methods did he use to make children show emotions so realistically? However, the young Liberer last year already proved his acting skills in the film "Special Midnight Issue", appearing in the company of famous Shannon and Edgerton.  The film Andres Muschetti turned out to be deeper than any other horror movie that disappears from the head as the distance from the cinema hall moves away. The director managed to feel a double bottom in the experiences of the young heroes: their fear, which is present here and now, is only the tip of the iceberg, while under the water is hidden the fear of approaching growing up. The viewer observes this when, having suffered the first failure in the battle with Pennywise, the guys try to hide from what is happening, hovering all day in slot machines and distancing themselves from their fellow losers. As for Bill Skarsgard, who was to embody the image of the killer clown himself, he coped with his task one hundred percent. It would seem that Tim Curry in the 1990 miniseries closed this topic and there is nowhere else to develop it. However, Skarsgard under the leadership of Muschetti showed a new direction. The director and artist have created the embodiment of absolute evil hiding behind the image of a harmless clown with an insinuating voice. The very evil that cannot be negotiated, but can only be defeated by overcoming one's own fears. The plot of the film is close enough to the original. Of course, the authors filmed with an eye to timing, so the film adaptation included only the lines directly related to the main characters. For obvious reasons, the film lacks the teenage group sex scene, which has become one of the most controversial in the book. As for the antagonist, the authors decided to report a minimum of information about him, and this makes his image even more frightening: as we know, the unknown is always frightening. Immersion in the era is also interestingly realized in the film. The filmmakers shifted the time of action by 30 years, and in order to show that the events do not take place in the 50s, as in the book, but in the 80s, the director scattered movie posters with films that were launched at that time.  The director did not glorify the possibilities of modern graphics. Of course, the new film is strikingly superior in special effects to the first film version, but the director does not even think to put them at the forefront, using only when necessary. He pays much more attention to the color saturation of the frames and editing. The very attempt to shoot a movie in the old-fashioned way already deserves respect, and when the director shows that he not only wants, but can do it at a high level, the audience throws another bonus into the picture's success box. Humor became an unexpected guest in the film. Moreover, the vast majority of jokes are below the belt. When asked why this particular direction is, the answer is very simple: the puberty of the main characters. Children think about it, and their bragging about their own victories looks naive and funny out of the blue. There is also a controversial point in the film. The authors have devoted so much time to drama and the elaboration of characters that there is very little left for "boo-effects". And if you remove a few scenes, then the "adult" rating will not be so mandatory. On the one hand, this is good: the book original King was criticized precisely for too many horror fragments. But on the other hand, viewers who go to the cinema just to be scared by It will not get the proper dose of adrenaline.  The new film "It" confirmed the repeated statements of the creators: this is not a remake of a mini-series, but a full-fledged adaptation of the book Stephen King . And if not the best, then definitely one of the best. With a high degree of probability, we can assume that Fukunaga would have removed a fundamentally different story with different accents, but we will probably not know this. Andres Muschetti , in turn, confirmed that his "Mom" was not a one-time pleasant surprise. From now on, the world will follow the new terribly interesting stories of this director much more closely. The Topic of Article: One, two, the clown will take you. Review of the film ”It”. |
