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Clowns are creepy no matter what. We can all agree on that, right?

But Pennywise, the dancing clown who tracks down and torments the children of small-town Maine in “It,” is deeply unsettling. At least, he is in the latest incarnation of Stephen King ’s iconic novel. Infamously, Tim Curry ’s take on the character in the 1990 TV miniseries version was so over-the-top, it was laughable—not that you’re looking for understatement in your homicidal clowns.

But what Bill Skarsgard does with the role works well precisely because he doesn’t appear to be laboring so hard to frighten us. He doesn’t vamp it up. He’s coy—he toys with these kids—making his sudden bursts of insane clown hostility that much more shocking.

Even more effective than the horror elements of Argentine director Andy Muschietti ’s adaptation is the unexpected humor he reveals in the story—and, ultimately, the humanity. Finding that combination of tones is such a tricky balance to pull off: the brief lightening of a tense moment with a quick quip, or an earnest monologue in the face of extreme danger. But “It” makes that work nearly every time, thanks to its perfectly calibrated performances from a well-chosen cast.

The kid-bonding parts of the movie are actually stronger than the creepy-clown parts, even though images of that freakish, frilly fiend will be the ones that keep you awake at night. Led by “ Midnight Special ” star Jaeden Lieberher —whose everyman (everykid?) appeal grows with each film—and including a star-making performance from Sophia Lillis as the crew’s lone female member, it’s mostly unknown actors who comprise the film’s so-called “Losers Club.” But their characters are distinctly drawn, each with a fleshed-out backstory that explains why their fears make them so vulnerable to Pennywise’s attacks.

Unlike King’s novel and the 1990 original “It,” the screenplay from Chase Palmer , Cary Fukunaga (the acclaimed writer-director of “ Sin Nombre ” and “ Beasts of No Nation ”) and Gary Dauberman doesn’t jump back and forth in time. It moves the time frame to 1988-89 and sticks with our core group of seven kids while they’re still adolescent misfits, which grounds their story and makes it more immersive. (It also surely will draw comparisons to the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” another supernatural mystery set in small-town America in the 1980s. The nostalgia factor is strong for those of us who grew up then, too.)

Muschietti’s version begins as the book does, though, with innocent, six-year-old Georgie Denbrough ( Jackson Robert Scott ) chasing his toy boat as it sails down a gutter and into a storm drain on a rainy afternoon in fictional Derry, Maine. He’s especially fond of the boat because it was a gift from his beloved older brother, Lieberher’s Bill, a smart, skinny kid who struggles with a stutter. That’s why his choice to chat with Pennywise—who just happens to pop up in the sewer with the boat and a smile—leads to his tragic demise. (Muschietti’s cutaways to a cat who witnesses everything from a nearby porch are chilling; he showed that same delicate mastery of mood with his underappreciated 2013 horror film “ Mama ,” starring Jessica Chastain .)

But Bill insists Georgie has just gone missing, as such an unusually large number of Derry children have over the years. He enlists his posse of similarly bullied, outcast pals to help him get to the bottom of this lingering mystery: wisecracking trash-talker Richie ( Finn Wolfhard , who also happens to be in “Stranger Things”); wimpy mama’s boy Eddie ( Jack Dylan Grazer ); nervous rabbi’s son Stanley ( Wyatt Oleff ); heavyset new kid Ben ( Jeremy Ray Taylor ); and the tough-but-kind Beverly (Lillis). Eventually, the home-schooled farmhand Mike ( Chosen Jacobs ), who’s suffered racial attacks as the only black kid in town, makes them a team of seven.

Despite the many terrifying moments they endure in their quest—scenes that will leave you trembling and giggling at once—“It” is even more powerful in the warm, easy camaraderie between its young stars. Certainly you could view it as a straight-up horror flick, but the underlying allegory of these characters facing their deepest fears as they enter adulthood gives the movie more emotional heft—a bit of bittersweet within the suffering.

These kids have all languished on the fringes—hence the “Losers Club” tag they wear as a badge of honor—whether it’s because of an overbearing mother, an abusive father or a devastating family loss. But they’re also all on the cusp of something. Pennywise knows what frightens them in this precarious state of flux and tries to use that devious, supernatural ability to lead kids to their doom. Confronting those fears rather than running away is what just might save them.

Tonally, “It” feels like a throwback to great King adaptations of yore—particularly “Stand By Me,” with its ragtag band of kids on a morbid adventure, affecting bravado and affectionately hassling each other to mask their true jitters. Wolfhard in particular has great comic timing as the profane Richie. Technically, Muschietti shows some glimmers of early Spielberg, too—the low camera angles, the images of kids on bikes pedaling furiously in a pack, the overall mix of wonder and danger.

“It” could have used a bit of tightening as it builds toward its climax, though. While the imagery is undeniably harrowing and even poignant in the action-packed third act, some of it feels dragged out and redundant. And because the final confrontation takes place within a dark, underground lair, it’s sometimes difficult to tell exactly what’s going on, despite the impressive visual effects on display as Pennywise unleashes his full powers on his young attackers. (That’s one of many ways in which the new “It” is a vast improvement over its low-tech predecessor.)

Not to burst your balloon, though, but the closing credits suggest this may not be the last we’ve seen of Pennywise after all.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Rated R for violence/horror, bloody images, and for language.

135 minutes

Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise

Jaeden Lieberher as Bill Denbrough

Jeremy Ray Taylor as Ben Hanscom

Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh

Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier

Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie Kaspbrak

Chosen Jacobs as Mike Hanlon

Wyatt Oleff as Stan Uris

Nicholas Hamilton as Henry Bowers

Owen Teague as Patrick Hockstetter

Logan Thompson as Victor Criss

Jake Sim as Belch Huggins

Jackson Robert Scott as Georgie

Steven Williams as Leroy Hanlon

Javier Botet as The Leper

• Andy Muschietti

Writer (based on the novel by)

• Stephen King
• Gary Dauberman
• Chase Palmer
• Cary Fukunaga

Cinematographer

• Chung-hoon Chung
• Jason Ballantine
• Benjamin Wallfisch

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Common sense media reviewers.

Terrifying evil clown movie based on Stephen King classic.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Teaming up with others can help you beat seemingly

The lead characters are troubled outcasts prone to

Most lead characters are White, except for Mike (p

Very scary stuff; children are in constant peril,

Young teens make sex-related jokes with terms like

Very strong language, much of it spoken by 13-year

Many empty beer bottles near an adult's chair in o

Parents need to know that It is a horror film based on Stephen King's 1986 novel, which was previously adapted into a 1990 TV miniseries. It's very scary, and things get pretty gory: characters are stabbed, impaled, and beaten with rocks and blunt objects. A boy's arm is bitten off, teens shoot guns (once at…

Positive Messages

Teaming up with others can help you beat seemingly impossible odds and achieve a common goal. But bullying is shown in different forms, from emotionally abusive parents to physically abusive teens -- and the ways it's dealt with sometimes involve violence.

Positive Role Models

The lead characters are troubled outcasts prone to iffy behavior or lying -- but they step up and are at their best when working as a team.

Diverse Representations

Most lead characters are White, except for Mike (played by Chosen Jacobs, who's Black). Bill's actor, Jaeden Martell, has a Korean grandmother, but he passes for White in the film. Main lead Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) is larger than his peers and avoids weight-based stereotypes, characterized as being smart. (Everyone else in the cast is thin.) Though Beverly (Sophia Lillis) is the only girl among the group, she's resilient, courageous, and unafraid to face the clown. Bullying language includes "f--got" and, given the film's setting in 1989, there's mention of the AIDS epidemic (plus misinformation about how it's transmitted -- a character says someone got it by "touching a dirty pole on the subway").

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Very scary stuff; children are in constant peril, with a flat-out terrifying clown who threatens the main characters. Lots of bullying, including a scene in which a teenager carves a child's stomach with a knife, and another stabs a man in a very bloody scene. Teens bully a classmate by spreading rumors about how she's slept around. A bathroom is covered in blood, and characters spend a scene cleaning it up. A sheep is killed with a bolt gun. Rock throwing, with injuries. Broken arm. Clown stabbed through the face. Characters shoot guns, taking aim at a cat. Kicking, smashing in head with toilet tank lid. Kids beat the clown with many kinds of blunt objects. A father psychologically abuses his teen daughter -- rape is implied. The evil clown has supernatural powers, including shape-shifting and removing his own jaw.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Young teens make sex-related jokes with terms like "tickling your pickle," "period," "vagina," "birth control pills," "crabs," etc. Teens go swimming in their underwear. A kid tells another kid to "blow his dad." Two kids share a consensual kiss. Nonconsensual sex is also implied -- see Violence & Scariness for details.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Very strong language, much of it spoken by 13-year-olds, including "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "bulls--t," "t-ts," "ass," "damn," "d--k," "f--got," "piss," "you suck," "my wang," "bitch," "retarded," plus "Jesus" (as an exclamation).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Many empty beer bottles near an adult's chair in one scene. A girl steals cigarettes and later smokes a cigarette in a bathroom.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that It is a horror film based on Stephen King 's 1986 novel, which was previously adapted into a 1990 TV miniseries . It's very scary, and things get pretty gory: characters are stabbed, impaled, and beaten with rocks and blunt objects. A boy's arm is bitten off, teens shoot guns (once at a cat), and a sheep is killed with a bolt gun. There's lots of bullying, and it's implied that a father sexually abuses his teen daughter (who is also bullied by her classmates who spread rumors she's slept with many guys). Pennywise, the evil clown played by Bill Skarsgård , uses supernatural powers, including shape-shifting and removing his own jaw. Characters, including 13-year-olds, say "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," "f--got," and more. You can also expect a fair bit of sex-related talk among teens, though much of it is naïve and meant to be humorous. Two kids share a consensual kiss. Empty beer bottles are seen, and a girl steals a pack of cigarettes, later smoking one. Though the leads are mostly White boys, Mike (Chose Jacobs) is Black, Ben ( Jeremy Ray Taylor ) is larger than his thin peers and isn't defined by his weight, and Beverly ( Sophia Lillis ), the group's only female character, is resilient and courageous. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 289 parent reviews

Get Ready to Scream: Why 'This' is the Perfect First Horror Movie

A good start before going with overuse of jump scares and poor direction, what's the story.

IT begins in 1988 in the town of Derry, Maine, where little Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) goes outside in the rain to sail the toy boat that his older brother, Bill ( Jaeden Lieberher ), made for him. The boat goes down the drain. Looking into the sewer, Georgie encounters a scary clown called Pennywise ( Bill Skarsgård ) and disappears. The following summer, as school lets out, Bill and the other town outcasts -- including Beverly Marsh ( Sophia Lillis ) and loudmouth Richie Tozier ( Finn Wolfhard ) -- are beset by teenagers. They start to experience terrifying events of their own and notice that other kids in town are disappearing. Thanks to their new friend, Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), the teens discover that the waves of evil things seem to happen in cycles of 27 years and that all of it leads back to a well in the basement of a creepy old house. Bill vows to stop whatever it is that killed his brother.

Is It Any Good?

Based on Stephen King's 1986 novel, this terrifying clown movie builds its fright from fear itself. In that respect, It is more aligned with The Goonies , Stand by Me , and Stranger Things than it is with slasher movies or jump scares. Director Andy Muschietti , whose disappointing horror movie Mama never would have indicated anything as good as It , keeps things simple by focusing on the bond between the outcast kids -- there are plenty of scenes that could have been taken right out of any summertime coming-of-age movie -- and by using a slick combination of practical and digital effects.

The result feels like it could have come right out of the 1980s. Few of the familiar, overused clich és of more recent horror movies are here, and, with its effective use of music, editing, set design, choice of angles, and overall rhythms, It generates honest-to-goodness tingles, rather than quick shocks. And Pennywise (a chilling Skarsgård) is an iconic character, based not on a simple fear of death but on something more primal and unexplainable, the thing nightmares are made from.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about It's violence . What's the difference between the violence committed by abusive parents and classmates and the movie's supernatural forces? What's the impact of media violence on kids ?

Clowns are often seen at the circus or children's parties. Why is the clown here so scary?

How are the teens who bully their peers depicted in the movie? What are some ways to deal with harassment? How would you deal with them?

How does this movie compare to the book? To the miniseries ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 8, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : January 9, 2018
• Cast : Bill Skarsgård , Finn Wolfhard , Jaeden Martell
• Director : Andres Muschietti
• Inclusion Information : Asian actors
• Studio : New Line Cinema
• Genre : Horror
• Topics : Book Characters , Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Run time : 135 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : violence/horror, bloody images, and for language
• Last updated : April 21, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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It Review: An Excellent Coming-of-Age Movie, Until That Clown Gets in the Way

By Hillary Busis

The most appealing parts of Andy Muschietti’s splashy It channel another classic Stephen King adaptation—but not the 1990 miniseries version of It , featuring an iconic Tim Curry performance that sent scores of terrified children straight to the therapist’s couch (according to schoolyard legend, anyway).

No, It is at its best when the titular shape-shifting demon—which, as if you weren’t aware, most often takes the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown—is nowhere to be found. The first It was anchored by Curry’s gleeful menace; the second focuses on the bond formed between a group of young misfits one crazy summer. There’s more than a whiff of Stand by Me about the newer movie, not only because of thematic similarities between that film’s source material and It, but also thanks to Muschietti’s killer cast—a deft collection of teenaged talents that seem destined to break big à la Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell.

When It ’s seven-core performers— Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, and Jack Dylan Grazer —are arguing about the merits of loogie mass vs. distance or bashfully exploring their first flashes of puppy love, It is a delight. Every member of the gang that comes to call themselves the Losers’ Club is natural and charismatic, especially the luminous Lillis as Beverly, the only girl in the group, and Wolfhard, whose wisecracking Richie easily walks away with the movie. Their ensemble scenes display the same sort of easy camaraderie that made Stranger Things (which also stars Wolfhard, and was heavily influenced by the original It ) such a hit for Netflix last summer. Sure, the movie’s R rating allows Muschietti to get gorier than the 1990 It —but more importantly, it gives the kids the freedom to say “fuck,” not gratuitously but with a studied nonchalance familiar to anyone who’s ever been 13.

Alas, It isn’t just a coming-of-age story; it’s also a movie about a killer clown. And while its revamped Pennywise, played here by Bill Skarsgård (brother-of- Alexander, son-of- Stellan ), has his moments, his scenes often feel more distracting than essential.

#cneembed: script/video/5981d176be10344717000000.js?muted=1 ||||||

Though King’s novel crosscuts between its characters as children in 1958 and as adults in 1985, the new movie takes advantage of current nostalgia trends by transporting the kids to 1989 and nixing material about the grown-up Losers entirely. (That’s all coming in the sequel .) The shifting timeline doesn’t affect the Losers’ dynamic, but it does force It, which can take the form of the thing that scares each child most, to reach into a new bag of tricks.

When he’s not japing as Pennywise, King’s It loves to impersonate old Universal creatures like Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, and the Wolfman. Because those beasts don’t hit the same beats for modern audiences, Muschietti’s It opts instead to transform into a series of grotesque computer-generated spectacles, which are usually punctuated by a wordless appearance from Pennywise himself. While the film sometimes uses suspense as a tool, it more often dives head-first into dramatizing King’s grislier flights of fancy, from a child’s arm being ripped off to a fountain of blood that puts the bucket in Carrie to shame.

Though the filmmakers claim to have relied on practical effects whenever possible, there’s still a C.G.I. slickness here that robs It itself of its urgency. Tim Curry’s version of the clown was all chalky greasepaint and bloodshot eyes and horrific yellow teeth—a creature of fantasy, sure, but a tangible one. By contrast, Skarsgård’s preternaturally baby-smooth face and generic horror-movie growl fail to make much of a lasting impression, especially because he has fewer lines than Curry did. And though some of the film’s bigger set pieces show the same irreverent wit as the Losers’ ensemble scenes—at one point, two of the kids are faced with a set of doors reading “SCARY,” “VERY SCARY,” and “NOT SCARY AT ALL”—those overlong sequences are often dragged down by clichés, all swelling music cues and jump scares and shots of a child walking slowly toward something he should logically be running away from.

By Chris Murphy

It’s the human monsters in It that end up leaving a more permanent mark, from the adults who consciously ignore the strange and violent happenings in their sleepy Maine town to the father who sexually assaults his child—though the movie decides to soften the mortal bullies who also torment the Losers. (There are a lot of people tormenting the Losers!) In the book and miniseries, those cartoonish thugs are virulently racist and anti-Semitic; in the movie, they’re just sadistic jerks. While the impulse to avoid using racially charged language is understandable, doing so also gives Jacobs’s Mike, the only Loser of color, even less of an arc than the he has in the flashback half of the book—especially since his role as the gang’s chief expositor has also been handed off to another character. Together, these decisions have the unfortunate effect of making Mike the least well-defined member of the group; perhaps the sequel will flesh him out a bit more.

If It were just a flashy horror spectacle, issues like that—and the film’s treatment of Beverly, whose main personality trait is the desire she sparks in others—wouldn’t stick out quite as much. But like King’s best work, the movie wants to be greater than the sum of some cheap scares. Often, thanks to its strong cast and quieter moments, It succeeds in this goal—but there’d be a lot more time for character development if the film didn’t feature quite so many long, frenetic scenes of animated mayhem. As a seminal entry in the analog “kids on bikes” genre , King’s It successfully married real terror (and a magic turtle!) with a lovely meditation on innocence lost. The new It almost makes you wish for a story that ditched the clown for a less literal metaphor.

When Stephen King Reviews Stephen King Movies

Hillary Busis

Senior hollywood editor.

By Dana Schwartz

By Laura Bradley

Screen Rant

As a coming of age parable, it succeeds at being both horrifying and emotionally-resonant, even while adapting only half of king's original story..

Adapted from the best-selling Stephen King novel of the same name (first published in 1986), the movie version of  IT spent a number of years in development under the watchful eye of filmmaker Cary Fukunaga ( Beasts of No Nation ) before ultimately making it to the big screen with Andy Muschietti (the director of  Mama ) at the helm. The change in directors was no doubt of concern to fans of both King's source material and the horror/thriller author's body of work in general, given that movie/TV adaptations of King's literature have (to put it simply) a spotty record, at best. Despite its drawn out pre-production process and change in creative personnel, IT  is one of the better cinematic interpretations of King's writing and certainly the best produced in modern times. As a coming of age parable, IT succeeds at being both horrifying and emotionally-resonant, even while adapting only half of King's original story.

On a rainy September day in the city of Derry, Maine, circa 1988, young Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) mysteriously goes missing after he sets off playing with a paper boat that his older brother, Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), made for him. Several months later, at the start of the summer of 1989 (and the end of the school year), Bill sets out with his friends - who together form a group known as The Losers' Club - to try and find his younger sibling at long last, despite his parents having already decided that Georgie is dead and gone.

However, in the process of searching for Georgie, The Losers' Club - along with new recruits in the forms of the socially-stigmatized Beverly (Sophia Lillis), home-schooled Mike (Chosen Jacob) and new kid Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) - discover the terrifying truth about Derry: that it is the home of a seemingly immortal creature that can shape-shift and feeds on children by taking on the form of one Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård). When the Losers come to realize that Pennywise gains strength by feeding on their own fears, it falls to the young outsiders to band together and battle their demons from both within and from the outside world, if they are to stay alive.

In terms of narrative, IT  is more of a troubling and creepy fantasy allegory along the lines of Muschietti's directorial debut Mama than a "scary" piece of filmmaking. In that respect, though, the movie is faithful in spirit to King's source material, despite making some significant changes to the text - in particular, updating the time period in which the members of the Losers' Club are preteens from the 1950s to the 1980s. Muschietti isn't operating on quite the same level yet as the best modern mainstream horror directors (see James Wan, David F. Sandberg) when it comes to delivering scares through tension-fueled sequencing and/or building up to the spooky moments (e.g. jump scares). However, because it offers both more overtly disturbing imagery and narrative substance than many other studio horror films nowadays (even the R-Rated ones), IT  manages to be more "horrifying" than its peers, despite being less "scary."

The IT script, which is credited to Fukunaga and his writing partner Chase Palmer, as well as Gary Dauberman ( Annabelle: Creation ), explores the same themes of childhood grief and trauma as King's original novel does, as well as the timely-as-ever idea that evil must be actively confronted through mutual cooperation and trust, lest it be allowed to flourish. Muschietti's film adaptation does justice by these elements from King's novel, thanks in no small part to the charismatic and compelling young actors who bring The Losers' Club's various personalities to life. Between determined Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), kindly Beverly (Sophia Lillis), wise-guy Ritchie ( Stranger Things ' Finn Wolfhard), intellectual Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), courageous Mike (Chosen Jacobs), practical Stanley (Wyatt Oleff) and hypochondriac Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), the Losers bring both heart and humor to the proceedings here, making it easy to cheer for them as they battle terrors of both the fantastical and everyday variety during their adventure.

While IT  explores the pain and suffering of The Losers' Club with enough depth (some, like Bill and Beverly, more than others) to make their experiences and the characters feel grounded, it has less success at making both the adults that populate Derry and borderline-psychotic local bully Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) feel equally three-dimensional. Because  IT  only hints at the effect that its namesake has had on the town of Derry and the people who have long resided there (including, Beverly's own abusive father), the human villains in the film come off as being kitschy - as though they've been lifted straight from an actual 1980s coming of age movie, themselves. Pennywise's backstory and the mythology behind the creature isn't revealed in full here either (more on that later), but Bill Skarsgård nevertheless succeeds in leaving his mark on the role by putting a radically different (read: more chilling and inhuman) spin on the monster than Tim Curry did with his memorable performance as "The Dancing Clown" in the 1990s IT TV miniseries. However, whereas Curry succeeded in being a scene-stealer in the '90s small screen version of IT , the opposite is true for the movie, e.g. Skarsgård's Pennywise is overshadowed by the Losers' Club and their personal struggles.

Both Skarsgård's Pennywise and the setting of IT (2017) are, naturally, more polished in their presentation and design compared to their counterparts in the '90s TV adaptation. Thanks to costume designer Janie Bryant ( Mad Men ) and production designer Claude Paré ( The Age of Adaline ), the 1980s backdrop of IT is convincing and manages to include nods to the pop culture of the time in a more organic fashion that, arguably, something such as  Stranger Things does. Cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung ( Stoker ) likewise uses strikingly dark colors and shadows to create slick horror movie scenery (including, the sewers beneath Derry and the infamous Neibolt Street house) that looks far better and bigger than the film's modest budget might suggest. That being said, the movie admittedly has mixed success when it comes to using CGI to realize Pennywise's fantastical characteristics and the creations that he conjures from the Losers' imagination. Like Mama , IT is most effective when it applies its digital effects with a more subtle touch.

It's no secret that IT only adapts half of King's original novel for the big screen (as was mentioned earlier) - and though the film by and large works as a standalone narrative, it noticeably leaves a few smaller story threads dangling and questions unanswered, for IT: Chapter Two (as the sequel presumably will be titled) to pick up. The decision to split up King's massive source material into two separate parts was a smart call, since it allows Muschietti to deliver a solid horror filmgoing experience here - without having to sacrifice much of the substance of King's book in the process - along with the promise of a second installment in the IT  film saga that should only enrich its predecessor (and vice versa). Sine the film mostly lives up to the current expectations that are surrounding it, there's fair reason to think that IT: Chapter Two , with Muschietti back at the helm, will float equally well.

IT  is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It is 135 minutes long and is Rated R for violence/horror, bloody images, and for language.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

Key Release Dates

• New Line Cinema

Summary When children begin to disappear in the town of Derry, Maine, a group of young kids are faced with their biggest fears when they square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.

Directed By : Andy Muschietti

Written By : Chase Palmer, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Gary Dauberman, Stephen King

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Bill Skarsgård

Jaeden Martell

Bill denbrough.

Finn Wolfhard

Richie tozier.

Sophia Lillis

Beverly marsh, jeremy ray taylor, ben hanscom, chosen jacobs, mike hanlon.

Jack Dylan Grazer

Eddie kaspbrak.

Wyatt Oleff

Stanley uris.

Nicholas Hamilton

Henry bowers, belch huggins, logan thompson, victor criss, owen teague, patrick hockstetter.

Jackson Robert Scott

Georgie denbrough, stephen bogaert, stuart hughes, officer bowers, geoffrey pounsett, zach denbrough, sharon denbrough, molly atkinson, sonia kaspbrak.

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Leroy hanlon, elizabeth saunders, mrs. starret, critic reviews.

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Movie Review: IT (2017)

• Movie Reviews
• 8 responses
• --> September 8, 2017

It can be a tricky thing to review horror films. The red-headed stepchild of the movie business, horror is an incredibly subjective genre for fans. Despite repeatedly being let down by film after film, we return to the theater with each new offering, hoping for a gem — a new classic. Remakes are especially daunting undertakings, as the new version is up against fiercely loyal fans who judge a new film by its poster, well before the first images even grace the screen. Add to these challenges book adaptations with already established film versions and you’re faced with an unscalable feat.

In the case of IT , there are some seriously huge clown shoes to fill — how do you successfully adapt a revered classic of horror literature written by the king himself (Stephen King, that is)? How do you remake an existing adaptation, featuring one of the most iconic horror characters with an unmatchable performance by the legendary Tim Curry?

Ask director Andy Muschietti. Ask screenwriters Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman. Ask Bill Skarsgård. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it admirably.

In October of 1988, young Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher, “ Midnight Special ”), sick in bed, builds a paper boat for his little brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) to sail on the rainy streets of Derry, Maine. The love the two brothers share is immediately apparent; Georgie looks up to Bill, and Bill is clearly his hero. When Bill warns Georgie to be careful outside, you know that Georgie would never think of doing otherwise; however, in the subsequent well-known (and well-publicized) scene, Georgie’s boat gets away from him and slips down into the sewer where it’s retrieved by Pennywise the Clown. After a tense and terrifying encounter, Georgie disappears, adding to the growing list of missing children in their small town.

The following June, Bill and his friends escape the doldrums of school into the freedom of summer. While his friends are excited about dumping their leftover folders and notebooks into the trash, Bill remains preoccupied with finding his little brother, studying sewer blueprints and maps in his garage. Meanwhile, his friends are haunted by different fears: Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer, “Scales: Mermaids Are Real”) is tormented by a skeletal leper that chases him from a dilapidated neighborhood house; a twisted ghostly woman leers at Stanley Uris (Wyatt Oleff, “ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ”) from a painting in his father’s office; Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis, “37”) hears whispering children calling her for help from the drain in her bathroom sink; Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs, “Cops and Robbers”) barely escapes the reaching ghostly hands from the site of a historical fire; and Ben Hanscom’s (Jeremy Ray Taylor, “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip”) studies are interrupted by something treacherous in the storage room of the local library . . . not to mention the very real-life threats they all face from bullies Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton, “ Captain Fantastic ”), Belch Huggins (Jake Sim, “Raising Expectations” TV series), Victor Criss (Logan Thompson), and Patrick Hockstetter (Owen Teague, “Echoes of War ”). The Derry kids — dubbed the Losers’ Club by Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard, “Stranger Things” TV series) — realize that there is a malicious evil in their small town, and that the adults will be of no help to them (in fact, they often just don’t see things happen . . . literally and figuratively). United in their fear of the terrifying clown they see around every corner, they decide their only defense is to venture after Pennywise together, hoping they can prevent any more children from going missing.

Stephen King’s classic New York Times bestseller IT is a doorstop of a book that stretches past 1000 pages, delving into brilliant characterizations, dreadful town histories, and bone-chilling encounters with an ancient evil that returns every 27 years. In 1990, Tommy Lee Wallace brought his version to the small screen in a four-hour miniseries that became the source point for many people with coulrophobia (fear of clowns). Andy Muschietti’s version of IT (this film being Chapter One) keeps the focus to the children of Derry, and the cast is pitch-perfect in their believability. One will be immediately charmed by each of the Losers’ Club members, and will feel strong nostalgic pangs for a simpler time of bike-riding and summer swimming trips. Their loyalty and love for each other is palpable, and the audience shares their faith in each other in their fight against the clown, masterfully recreated by Bill Skarsgård (“ Anna Karenina ”).

As incredible as Tim Curry was in 1990, Skarsgård embodies pure malevolence as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and his antics are guaranteed to create a new generation of clown phobics. While the CGI is a tad heavy-handed here and there, the overall effect of this new Pennywise is extremely unsettling and viewers will be just as entranced by his eyes as any of the characters in the film. Pennywise is truly fascinating to watch, and astonishingly, you’ll find yourself hoping for more terrifying doses of Skarsgård’s performance.

As a huge Stephen King fan myself, I’ve been anxiously anticipating the release of this film, as I’m frequently disappointed by lackluster and rushed adaptations of his work (case in point, this summer’s “ The Dark Tower ”); however, I was marvelously satisfied with Muschietti’s version of one of my favorite novels. While there are definitely small changes made that I’m not crazy about (far too little of Mike Hanlon, guys . . .) and one major change in particular near the end that I’m rather intrigued by (if you already know the novel, you’ll know what I mean when you [don’t] see it), IT has delivered an outstandingly well-written nostalgia trip into our past summers and past nightmares.

The voices of the children whisper that they “. . . all float down here” and warn that “You’ll float, too.” They’re not wrong. You’ll float, all right; you’ll float out of the theater with grim satisfaction, anxious for Chapter Two.

Tagged: children , clown , evil , murder , novel adaptation , remake

School teacher by day. Horror aficionado by night.

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'Movie Review: IT (2017)' have 8 comments

September 8, 2017 @ 9:10 pm DevlonOchre

Totally psyched to see my favorite King story get a proper treatment for screen!

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September 8, 2017 @ 9:56 pm wassupial

I definitely enjoyed it but it is not as dark and scary as I was hoping it’d be. Only the library scene got me to jump.

September 8, 2017 @ 11:21 pm GoodSamaritan

Never read the book nor have I seen the mini-series so I went in knowing nothing other than a evil clown was responsible for killing some kids. I guess because of this I was a bit letdown because I was expecting Pennywise to be more like Freddy Krueger and the movie more like A Nightmare on Elm Street. Still it’s not a bad movie just not what I was prepared for.

September 9, 2017 @ 12:17 am Pete

IT didn’t do anything for me.

September 9, 2017 @ 10:30 am cheeryhead

“one major change in particular near the end that I’m rather intrigued by (if you already know the novel, you’ll know what I mean when you [don’t] see it)”

So the sex scene is omitted? I don’t think it ever belonged in the book anyway and I think King regretted writing it in.

September 9, 2017 @ 12:02 pm Jackson War

I hear it described as The Goonies on horror steroids and uppers!

September 9, 2017 @ 3:38 pm Madelyn

I loved it. It didn’t scare me to where I wanted to hide my eyes but it scared me that I had a constant pit in my stomach. Great job by all the kid actors and Bill Skarsgard, they were very convincing. I can only hope Chapter 2 is done as good.

September 10, 2017 @ 6:01 am DanMaz

First chance I got I’d nope the hell outta that town!

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IT Reviews: See What Critics Are Saying About the New Stephen King Adaptation

Is it scary is it funny how is pennywise are there any major problems.

(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)

The reviews for  It   have finally arrived, just a couple days ahead of the movie’s release. But don’t let the late timing of their publication signal anything wrong. Just as  the initial social media buzz  on the Stephen King adaptation was positive, so are most of the full critiques, only now with some reservations. To start,  It currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 91%.

The film follows the story of a group of pre-teens who face off against an evil, child-murdering entity taking the form of a clown named Pennywise. The highly anticipated movie is reportedly sufficiently scary and does the original novel justice as a drama, too. It’s sure to be a hit and earn a sequel that brings the rest of the book to the big screen.

Here’s what critics are saying about the movie in reviews:

Is It Scary?

Beyond a shadow of a doubt the most blood-curdling film of the year. – Travis Hopson, Punch Drunk Critics

As a well-crafted scarefest, it’s satisfying and exhausting in equal measure. – James Hennessy, 4:3

This is an ensemble smorgasbord of scariness, or maybe a portmanteau of petrification, throwing everything but the haunted kitchen-sink at the audience in the cause of freaking us out. – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

It  is more intense than it is chilling… there are some good scares, to be sure, but when the movie shifts tones, it does so definitively. – Katie Rife, AV Club

It ’s power to scare, ultimately, is not as strong as its power to evoke the joys, confusions and fears of childhood, or its power to leave you wanting more. – John Nugent, Empire

How Is It Generally As A Horror Movie?

Vibrant, confident, and overflowing with a surprising amount of emotion,  It  is almost everything you could want from a modern horror film. – Matt Goldberg, Collider

One of the best, most exciting, thrilling, heart-filled horror titles that we’ve seen in recent years. – Eric Eisenberg, CinemaBlend

Delivers plenty of ultra-serious and strikingly crafted horror hijinks to feast on. – Matthew Pejkovic, Matt’s Movie Reviews

For the first time in a long time, someone has a made a children’s horror film that feels  dangerous … timeless horror gem worthy of repeat viewing,  It  is an instant Halloween classic that will haunt audiences for years to come. – Brad Miska, Bloody Disgusting

Not only one of the best horror films in years, it clearly stands as one of the best films of 2017. – Clayton Davis, Awards Circuit

How Does It Compare to Other Stephen King Adaptations?

It may not be the best Stephen King movie (even though it comes impressively close), but it’s probably the MOST Stephen King movie. – William Bibbiani, IGN

Among a couple of the best Stephen King adaptations to make its way to the big screen. – Jim Slotek, Original Cin

Faithful to the book’s overall mood while diverging from its particulars, and King fans will surely appreciate the clear effort and affection that went into this adaptation, even as it struggles to become more than the sum of its parts. – Andrew Barker, Variety

Is It Funny?

With plenty of gallows humor, as well as kid banter and inside jokes,  It  boasts a clever sense of humor. – Brian Truitt, USA Today

How Is Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise?

Skarsgard is icily menacing, the character’s evil eyes freezing the audience in its tracks. Mostly appearing as a creepy clown, Skarsgård taps into the disturbing juxtaposition of frivolity and derangement that many people associate with this common children’s entertainer. With the aid of makeup and special effects, the actor’s nerve-wracking stillness allows Pennywise to rightly assume his place among cinema’s memorable horror villains; even more appropriate as the film takes place during the late 1980s, when icons such as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees were haunting cinemas. – Tim Grierson, Screen International

Played to delirious, bizarre perfection by Bill Skarsgard. It’s impossible to best Tim Curry’s performance in the 1991  It  TV miniseries, and Skarsgard doesn’t even try…like Heath Ledger did with the Joker (but not  that  good), Skarsgard finds a new approach to playing a villain made iconic by another actor, and it works surprisingly well. – Britt Hayes, ScreenCrush

It’s a tremendous, unsettling and skillful performance, melding Heath Ledger’s Joker with something straight out of the mouth of hell. – Don Kaye, Den of Geek

How Is the Losers Club Handled?

Though the film is satisfyingly scary, it’s the kids who really steal the show here. Evoking childhood favorites like  Stand By Me  or  Now and Then , the Losers Club is filled with characters who feel so real it makes your heart ache. – Rachel Heine, Nerdist

It is essentially two movies. The better by far (and it’s very good) is the one that feels like a darker  Stand by Me  — a nostalgic coming-of-age story about seven likable outcasts riding around on their bikes and facing their fears together. – Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly

These kids, who refer to themselves as the “Losers Club”, felt like my favorite oddball characters from movies such as  The Goonies ,  Stand By Me  and TV shows like Netflix’s  Stranger Things. – Jamie Broadnax, Black Girl Nerds

A solid thriller that works best when it is most involved in its adolescent heroes’ non-monster-related concerns. – John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter

Across the board, Muschietti has assembled an amazing crew of young actors with a vibrant energy that makes them really fun to watch, whether they’re reacting (sometimes hilariously) to their dire situation or bonding at a local watering hole. Picture an R-rated  Sandlot  with a killer clown thrown into a mix, and you’ve got a pretty good start. – Rebecca Pahle, Film Journal International

How Does It Look?

Cinematography from Chung Chung-hoon, Park Chan-wook’s longtime DP, gives the film a richness and texture that’s far beyond that of most Hollywood films, let alone horror films. – Katie Rife, AV Club

How Original Is It?

At times, the movie excels at portraying the dread of children forced to confront a world indifferent to their concerns. But…it’s impossible to shake the feeling that we’ve been here many times before. – Eric Kohn, IndieWire

The problem is that almost everything here looks like route one scary-movie stuff that we have seen before. – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

A story that feels not so much freshly imagined as dutifully recounted. – Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Are There Any Other Major Problems?

Occasionally, the movie feels like it has bitten off more than it can chew, even with its expanded scope. Scenes and sequences sometimes feel disjointedly slapped together, like there were connective moments in-between that were, for some reason, left on the cutting room floor. – Drew Taylor, The Playlist

The non-clown essence of It …as creature design has become easier and more elaborate, thanks to digital techniques, it has also become less imaginative. Movie monsters resemble one another more and more, and movies of distinct genres feel increasingly trapped within the expected. The climactic sequence of  It  sacrifices horror-movie creepiness for action-movie bombast, staging a big fight in a cavernous space. We might as well be looking at superheroes. – A.O. Scott, New York Times

The escalating horrors are delivered via a rapid fusillade of discrete episodes that suggest journeys in a clunky, analogue-era ghost train. When all else fails, let’s have the mad clown jump loudly from the nearest large box. – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

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Review by Brian Eggert September 9, 2017

Stephen King’s novel  It  does not tell a cinematic story. Over the course of more than 1,100 pages, the massive 1986 tale of horror involves a killer alien clown haunting children in Derry, Maine, and then turning them into lunch on a 27-year cycle, while also flip-flopping between its adult characters and memories of their traumatic childhood. When they’re not being terrorized by Pennywise, the shark-toothed clown of our nightmares, they’re sharing psychic experiences with a benevolent turtle, evading a gang of King’s typically psychopathic bullies, and conducting strange rituals born from entrenched superstitions and fantasies. Even so, the first big-screen adaptation by director Andy Muschietti simplifies the material into an average, occasionally heavy-handed supernatural horror picture with an above-average cast of pre-teen performers. The film adopts a similar approach to other recent literary material with franchise potential (like The Hobbit ) and cuts the book’s story in half. By centering the action exclusively on the younger versions of the book’s characters, distributors at New Line Cinema have secured themselves an inevitable sequel following the adult counterparts, reportedly due in 2019.

Moved from the late 1950s to the late 1980s, the adaptation by Chase Palmer, Gary Dauberman, and Cary Fukunaga (who was originally going to direct) has the usual string of faithful moments and deviations from the source material. The new setting facilitates a nostalgia factor for today’s middle-aged viewers, complete with references to New Kids on the Block, Tim Burton’s Batman  in theaters, and plenty of other pop-culture references . The resituated era also follows in the wake of Netflix’s instant favorite  Stranger Things , the ’80s-set thriller about a group of children hunting a mystical creature. That show was a loving pastiche of various King stories, including The Body ,   Firestarter , and of course  It.  The cycle of influence has come full circle as Muschietti’s film borrows from the series’ alternating humor and horror (not to mention one of Stranger Things’ leading young actors, Finn Wolfhard), suggesting perhaps that  Stranger Things’  popularity may have justified the production.

Fans of the ABC network’s televised miniseries from 1990 fondly remember Tim Curry’s creepy clown, who helped established the story’s memorable lines like “You’ll float too.” Here, Bill Skarsgård (brother of Alexander, son of Stellan) puts on the clown suit as Derry’s longtime haunter, a shape-shifting sewer-dweller with a taste for fear. In the effective opening sequence, easily the most closely adapted from the book, six-year-old Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) follows a homemade paper sailboat in the rain, only to meet his grisly demise when faced with Pennywise the Dancing Clown—seen as a pair of glowing eyes, bad teeth in an over-salivating mouth, and a flurry of aural trickery. Creepy though Skarsgård’s performance can often be, Muschietti doesn’t seem to trust it.  Very rarely is Pennywise allowed to inhabit the frame on his own. The character has been accentuated by a copious amount of CGI augmentation (necessary in more monstrous sequences) that distracts from the inherent terror of an evil clown. Note the silly, computer-generated effect that blurs the background of Pennywise’s more violent moments, making him pop artificially from the screen; or the digitally rendered array of teeth hiding inside Pennywise’s head, like some kind serrated horror hole. None of the more FX-oriented qualities of the character match the nightmare power of Pennywise himself, grinning with a red balloon in hand.

The “Losers Club,” as they call themselves, consists of an archetypal group of King outsiders that resemble any number of cinematic kid-gangs from  The Goonies  to  The Monster Squad . Their leader is Bill (Jaeden Lieberher, from Midnight Special ), the older brother of the later Georgie, whose stuttering hasn’t been an impediment on his bravery. He’s followed by the hypochondriacal mama’s boy Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), their Jewish friend Stanley (Wyatt Oleff), and the sex-obsessed chatterbox Richie (Wolfhard, stealing the show). As school lets out for the summer and they make plans to search for the long-gone Georgie, the Club gains new members in Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), a shy bookworm interested in Derry’s high-body-count past; a home-schooled farmboy, Mike (Chosen Jacobs), who’s also the only black kid in town; and the tomboyish Beverly (Sophia Lillis), who brings an unsure female element into their group. Of course, everyone’s heart is aflutter around Bev, and she remains the impetus in a triangle including Bill and Ben. Bev may also be the most complicated character of the bunch, given her chain-smoking, thoughtfulness, and sexually abusive father.

Riding bikes around Derry and playing detective, the members of the Club experience individual waking dreams brought about by Pennywise. Bev experiences the worst of the hallucinations when her bathroom sink spews goopy blood and covers everything in a coat of red only her fellow Losers can see. And when they’re not evading their worst nightmares, they’re avoiding the mulleted Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton), the sort of irredeemable King crazy who carves his initial into a victim’s belly or tries to run the black kid out of town. On the strength of the young cast alone, It  becomes an engaging and intimate narrative. Each of the child actors gives a believable performance that never seems like child acting. Best of all, the Losers Club has chemistry and a kind of lived-in friendship that seems developed off-screen—the sort that made  Stand By Me  and  Stranger Things  so relatable and accessible. The only question that remains is whether the sequel’s players will be as charming or well-cast in the adult roles.

Cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon, a longtime collaborator with Park Chan-wook, gives the film an impressive physical reality that, supported by the rich production design by Claude Paré, lends the film a textured visual quality outside of the ho-hum digital effects. Regardless of looking sharp, no viewing experience in recent memory has been more distracting for its use of arch music and on-the-eardrum sound design. The film’s abrasive approach has replaced the psychological horror of the book, which mined its characters’ worst fears and brought them to life, with gimmicky shocks that feel typical in today’s supernatural-saturated horror genre (an approach that recalls Muschietti’s previous feature, his first, Mama   from 2013). When the scary things emerge from the dark and turn out to be digital specters, it’s not all that terrifying. More effective is our investment in the characters and their fates, as well as the individual performers and their ability to convince us of their terror.  It  should not be hailed as one of the great Stephen King stories on film. Frank Darabont, Rob Reiner, Stanley Kubrick, John Carpenter, George A. Romero, and David Cronenberg have each made better. Then again, perhaps after the sequel, the sum may be greater than its parts.

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The Entire It Story Finally Explained

The 2017 film It was a sensation. The movie, based on the 1986 Stephen King novel of the same name, set records upon its release with the biggest-ever opening weekend for both a horror movie and for the month of September on its way to becoming the highest-grossing horror film of all time. But the movie only adapted half of King's wildly popular and notoriously long novel, meaning that a sequel to It was a sure thing. Now, that sequel —   It: Chapter Two — is here, and the new film completes the epic story that began with its predecessor..

The novel It is told in a nonlinear fashion and describes a group of seven friends known as the Losers' Club who are tormented by a malevolent child-eating supernatural entity at two points in their lives: once as children, and again 27 years later as adults. The first It movie dealt only with the children's story, while the sequel tells the adults' tale while also weaving in some new information about their childhoods via flashbacks. It is a complex story in which a lot of things happen, and at times things get a bit confusing. But don't worry about getting lost in the story — we're here to explain everything you need to understand the full story of It .

In the beginning

In  It: Chapter 2 , Pennywise is revealed to have arrived in Derry millions of years ago on an asteroid, implying that It is an evil alien. No more details are given about its origins in the film, but that's what King's original novel is for. In the book, It is billions of years old, having originated in another dimension outside of our universe  known as the Macroverse . In prehistoric times, It came to Earth on an asteroid, landing in the place that would millions of years later become Derry, Maine. It hibernated until humans appeared, and then began a cycle of awakening every 27 years to feed on them because it is driven only by its desire to consume. It can take on any form, but its favorite eventually became that of Pennywise the clown. Its true form, known as the Deadlights, cannot be fully comprehended by human beings — the closest we can get is  a giant spider  — and looking upon them will drive a person insane. Beverly Marsh managed to glimpse them in the first film and make it out with her sanity, though she was cursed with visions of the Losers' collective demise.

As strange as Pennywise is, its mortal enemy is even more bizarre: A giant turtle named Maturin who also hails from the Macroverse and who created our universe. The turtle is a being of creation rather than consumption, and acts as a guardian of reality. Given the turtle's strangeness and complexity, the  It  films opted to omit Maturin from their version of the story.

You'll float, too

The story of It picks up in 1988 (bumped up from 1958 in the novel) when 7-year-old Georgie Denbrough ventures out into a rainstorm to play with a paper sailboat that his older brother Bill made for him. The boat gets away from Georgie, and ends up journeying down the street until it ends up in a storm drain. After chasing it, Georgie attempts to fish the boat out, only to discover that there is a clown in the storm drain as well. Though Georgie doesn't know it, this clown is the evil entity Pennywise, who has just awoken from its most recent 27-year slumber.

Pennywise entices Georgie — whose name it mysteriously knows — to come into the sewer, promising not only to give him his boat back, but also by telling him that an entire circus is waiting for him in the sewer. Georgie gets a little suspicious, but he still wants his boat back, so when Pennywise offers it to him, the kid goes for it. And for his trouble? Georgie gets his arm bitten off and then he's dragged into the sewer to be consumed by Pennywise. No one in Derry knows what happened to Georgie, and the town eventually moves on, assuming that he simply drowned. Bill, however, becomes determined to find out what happened to his brother.

Meet the Losers

The Losers' Club is the name of Bill's group of friends, wherein he acts as their de facto leader. Along with Bill, the club's original members are Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, and Stan Uris, with three more members added near the start of the first film: Ben Hanscom, Beverly Marsh, and Mike Hanlon. Everyone in the group is an outcast in their own way. Bill has a stutter, Beverly is rumored at school to be promiscuous, Ben is overweight, Mike is essentially the only black kid in town, Stan is a weakling, Richie is a loudmouth who wears thick glasses, and Eddie is sickly. The gang bonds over the fact that they're all "losers" — hence the group's name — and they spend the entire summer together following Georgie's disappearance the previous fall.

Though they aren't all aware of it initially, a number of the Losers' Club are also suffering from some sort of private trauma. Beverly's father is extremely abusive both physically and, it's strongly implied, sexually, which makes the bullying she receives for her nonexistent promiscuity all the more hurtful. Eddie has an extremely overprotective mother who refuses to let him do anything on his own, and makes him believe he's sick when he's not. Mike is an orphan whose parents burned alive — an event he witnessed firsthand. And Bill, of course, is still mourning the disappearance of his little brother, for which he feels guilty.

A love triangle

A few of the Losers are more than just friends. Or, at least, they hope to be. Over the course of the first film, both Ben and Bill develop feelings for Beverly . Ben is the first to develop a major crush, going so far as to write Beverly a love poem from a secret admirer in which he tells her that her "hair is winter fire." Beverly cherishes the poem and comes to believe Bill wrote it, and as a result, develops feelings for him — much to Ben's chagrin. Even after discovering that Ben was her mystery poet after he revives her from her Deadlights-induced coma with a kiss, Beverly is unable to dismiss her feelings for Bill, and at the conclusion of the first film, Beverly and Bill kiss.

In  It: Chapter Two , this love triangle continues through adulthood. In the book, following the Losers' Club's initial defeat of Pennywise, the group all go their separate ways. In the ensuing 27 years until Pennywise returns, a number of them go through major changes, but none greater than Ben. He physically transforms from an overweight kid to a wealthy and attractive man, and Beverly certainly notices when the gang reunites as adults — but it's still Bill she pines for. In the book, this translates into Bill and Bev sleeping together (even though they're both married), but in  It: Chapter 2 , they only share a kiss. Then, during the final battle with Pennywise, Bev finally realizes her feelings for Ben, and the two end up together.

Not a good place to grow up

Following the disappearance of Georgie, other children go missing in Derry, such as Eddie Corcoran and Betty Ripsom. This leads the Losers to believe that something is amiss in their town, and they're right. Before becoming a Loser himself, Ben begins researching the town's history, and finds that that murders and disappearances seem to spike in the town every 27 years at a rate six times the national average — for adults. After joining the Losers' Club and learning how they're trying to find out what happened to Georgie, Ben tells his new friends that the murder and disappearance rate for children in the town is much, much worse than the already high rate for adults. But it's not always Pennywise who directly causes the killings. His evil influence infects the town whenever he awakes, causing violence and hate crimes to spike.

In the novel, the role of town historian belongs to Mike rather than Ben. Mike first learns of the town's sordid history from his father, who kept a photo album filled with pictures of Derry's history that consequently features a number of photos of Pennywise; some from many decades earlier. As an adult, Mike is the only Loser to stay behind in Derry after the rest of his friends part ways, becoming the town librarian and furthering his knowledge about the most messed up little town in New England.

Pennywise the Dancing Clown

One by one, the Losers draw the attention of Pennywise. It appears to each of them separately, first appearing as one of their worst fears before showing them its clown form. Bill sees Georgie in his basement, Mike sees burning bodies trying to escape a building, Eddie sees a grotesquely deformed leper, Stan sees a painting of a ghoulish flautist come to life, Beverly is sprayed by a geyser of blood from her bathroom sink, Ben is chased by a headless man in the library, and Richie sees a maggot-infested doll of his own corpse. They soon discover that each of their hallucinations have one thing in common: a terrifying clown. The Losers quickly deduce that this clown must be behind the child murders in Derry. Pennywise also appears to Henry Bowers, the vicious town bully who torments the Losers. But instead of eating him, Pennywise uses Henry as an agent of destruction.

Pennywise needs to eat humans to survive: the creature's only purpose is to consume. And while It does sometimes kill adults, It greatly prefers to devour children. It's reason for this is pretty simple: According to Pennywise, afraid flesh tastes better, and children are easier to scare than adults. That's it. That's why Pennywise shapeshifts into whatever its victims are most afraid of, and why it usually stalks them for a time before killing them. It wants them to be as scared as possible before making them its next meal. In the book, It compares this process to salting meat .

Sewer rescue

After researching Pennywise and even seeing it together as a group, the Losers decide to confront it head-on. They track Pennywise's dwelling to a well beneath an abandoned house, and have a terrifying confrontation with It in the house that results in Eddie breaking his arm. After this frightening encounter, most of the Losers lose interest in trying to fight Pennywise and just pretend like nothing ever happened. That changes after Beverly is abducted by the clown, which rallies the other Losers to come to her rescue. They follow her trail to the town's sewers, where they're confronted by Henry Bowers. Henry has just murdered his father under the influence of It, and he's looking to continue his killing spree by knocking off a few Losers. Instead, Mike gets the best of Henry and pushes him into the well at the sewer's entrance, seemingly killing him. The Losers then enter It's domain to search for Beverly.

In the book, there was no such rescue mission. The Losers do indeed head to the sewers for a final confrontation with Pennywise, but they do so together as a group. The filmmakers' decision to alter the story and put the lone female Loser in a situation where she needed to be saved led to criticism, with some accusing the film of perpetuating a damsel in distress trope when the source material had no such issue. But then again, there is at least one aspect of the book that pretty much everyone is glad didn't make it into the movie .

A blood oath

During her capture, Beverly is rendered comatose after viewing It's Deadlights. She is awoken by a kiss from Ben, and the Losers are then able to defeat Pennywise by proving they're not afraid of it. They hurl insults at It and physically attack it, causing It to retreat to an early hibernation. After this experience, the kids come to the realization that they'll likely go their separate ways as they get older, but they know no one will possibly ever be able to relate to them like they relate to each other due to the bond they now share. In the first film, after realizing the importance of what they've just gone through, Bill (Stan in the book) suggests the Losers make a blood oath to swear that if Pennywise ever returns to Derry, they'll return to defeat It again. He finds a piece of broken glass, cuts each of their palms, and then they all stand in a circle and hold hands. This scene essentially concludes the film.

In It: Chapter Two and in the novel, all of the Losers eventually move away from Derry except for Mike. Twenty-seven years pass, and all of those who left gradually forget the events of their childhood. But Mike, having remained in Derry, remembers everything. And when children start disappearing in the town once again, he calls upon each of his old friends to return to Derry and fulfill the oath they made 27 years earlier.

27 years later

The Losers all find success in their adult lives. Bill is a famous novelist who's married to an even more famous actress named Audra Phillips. Ben is a successful architect. Richie is a famous stand-up comic in Los Angeles (in the book, he's a celebrity DJ). Eddie owns a successful risk management company in New York City (in the book, he owns an elite limousine business). Beverly is a highly respected fashion designer. And Stan is a wealthy accountant in a loving marriage. But despite their professional successes, some are still feeling the effects of their childhood trauma. Beverly is married to a man named Tom Rogan, who is physically abusive to her, and Eddie ended up marrying a woman who is nearly identical in personality to his overbearing mother. 

But none are holding onto more trauma than Stan. After receiving Mike's call, Stan immediately remembers the harrowing events of his childhood. Not willing to face It again, he draws a bath and slits his wrists. In  It: Chapter Two , he writes the other Losers explaining his actions, saying he knew he wouldn't be strong enough to face Pennywise again and would have gotten them all killed. 

The other six Losers reunite at a Chinese restaurant in Derry, the first time they've all been at the same place in 27 years. After Pennywise makes its presence known by taking on various disgusting forms in the group's fortune cookies and informing them of Stan's death, they all regain their horrifying childhood memories.

Richie's big secret

Pennywise returns from its 27-year hiatus, bringing evil back to Derry along with it. A gay man, Adrian Mellon, is walking with his partner from a festival in Derry when they are attacked by a group of homophobic young locals. The locals brutally beat the couple and then throw Adrian over a bridge, where he's pulled out of the water and consumed by Pennywise. This scene, pulled from the book, kicks off It: Chapter Two , but it's not the last instance of homophobia in the film.

In a flashback scene, Richie is shown to have been bullied when he was young for possibly being gay. The bullying continues to affect Richie as an adult, as the film strongly implies that he is living as a closeted gay man with Pennywise telling him that he knows his secret. It's also heavily implied that Richie is in love with Eddie. When Eddie is killed by It during the final battle, his death hits Richie the hardest. Richie refuses to leave Eddie's side and has to pretty much be pulled away by the other Losers. He later cries uncontrollably while the other Losers fondly remember Eddie, and needs to be consoled by them. At the end of the film, Richie revisits a secret "R+E" carving he made as a child and re-carves it, showing that he had loved Eddie since they were children. Although Richie's sexuality isn't explicitly addressed in the book, some believe it was hinted .

Is Henry really dead?

In the original film, Henry Bowers appeared to die after Mike shoved him down a well. This posed a potential problem for the sequel because in the book Henry goes on to play a key role as an adult. Well, fans of the book can rest easy, because  Henry survived his fall in the movie , too.  It: Chapter Two  features a flashback where Henry is shown to wake up after being expelled from the sewer following Pennywise's defeat. He is then arrested for the murder of his father and spends the next 27 years in an insane asylum.

Pennywise breaks Henry out of the asylum after the Losers reunite as adults, doing so in the form of the corpse of Patrick Hockstetter, a member of Henry's gang It had killed in the first film (It appears as a different one of Henry's friends in the book). Pennywise then sends Henry after the Losers, telling him to kill Eddie first. Henry stabs Eddie in the cheek, but Eddie removes the knife and stabs Henry back. Henry then runs off to attack Mike in the library, but he is killed by Richie before he has a chance to really hurt Mike. 

In the book, Henry is far a more effective weapon. He attacks Mike first, putting him in the hospital for the remainder of the story. He then attacks Eddie and breaks his arm before Eddie manages to kill him in self-defense.

The Ritual of Chüd

In Stephen King's novel, the only way to defeat It is through something called the Ritual of Chüd  — and it is, in a word, weird. It's a psychic battle of wills, fought on the astral plane, where one must use his or her power of imagination to defeat It, while also biting down on It's tongue to prevent it from escaping. The ritual is explained to Bill as a child by Maturin, and Bill uses it to defeat It during their first encounter. As an adult, Bill's imagination is too weak to defeat It, so he gets help in the ritual from the other Losers and they are able to kill It for good.

In the films, the Ritual of Chüd is entirely different. It's not mentioned at all in the first film, and in the second, Mike describes it as an ancient ritual used by the Native Americans who live outside of Derry to keep Pennywise at bay. The ritual requires all those who take part to sacrifice an item that is sacred to them and then burn the items in a ceremonial jar while chanting. Doing this summons It's true form, which can then be trapped in the jar. Pretty much the entire second act of It: Chapter Two consists of each of the Losers setting out on their own to locate their sacred items in Derry, with each of them remembering more from their pasts and having terrifying new encounters with Pennywise while doing so.

The final battle

In  It: Chapter Two , all six surviving Losers head to Pennywise's lair in the sewer for their final confrontation. They perform the Ritual of Chüd and... it doesn't work. It turns out, the ritual didn't work for the Native Americans either. Mike secretly knew this, but he thought it didn't work for them because they didn't truly believe it would. Pennywise then turns into an enormous clown spider and battles the Losers, killing Eddie in the process. The rest are then able to defeat It after realizing they need to make it feel "small." They continually insult It like they did when they were younger, causing It to shrink to a tiny size. They are then able to pull out It's heart and crush it, destroying Pennywise for good. This causes It's lair to collapse, but the Losers all manage to escape. They again go their separate ways, with Ben and Beverly now a couple, but this time they keep in touch and don't lose their memories.

The ending of the book is  very  different. It involves Pennywise using Beverly's abusive husband Tom to kidnap Bill's wife Audra, which lures the Losers to its lair (except for Mike, who remains hospitalized after Henry's attack on him). The Losers are able to defeat It using the Ritual of Chüd, but after doing so, a massive storm destroys the town of Derry. The Losers again go their separate ways, and they collectively start to forget what happened to them once again.

IT Movie Review: Chapter One

IT Movie Review

I have been waiting to see this film ever since it was announced.  So much so that I actually purchased tickets two weeks before it premiered in theaters.  I saw the 1990 made for television 2-part version when it aired and it terrified me.  I was 13 years old.  I was never afraid of clowns.  I’m still not.  But Pennywise was something different.  He wasn’t just a clown.  He was an evil, devilish entity.  Maybe it was the way Tim Curry portrayed It but boy was he the epitome of frightening.  I went into this telling myself I was not going to compare the original with the current version (too much).  Of course there are going to be differences as the original version was made for television.  I highlight some of those differences below but this new film can stand on its own in the genre.

The acting was fantastic!  Bill Skarsgård did an excellent job as Pennywise.  I was skeptical because I loved Curry’s portrayal but Skarsgård made the role his own.  His version will go down as one of the best in horror history for sure!  There was some CGI as was expected from a modern day horror film but I liked that Skarsgård had some scenes in the film where he was moving as himself.  I don’t even know if you can call the CGI in the 1990 version CGI but whatever it was there was less of it and it showed Curry’s range in the role.  That’s part of why his performance was so good.  Skarsgård, though, played Pennywise as he should.  His performance was menacing, energetic, and mesmerizing.

Wish there was a little less CGI with Pennywise.  It looked really good but I would have loved to see more real life creepy acting from Skarsgård.

IT lived up to everything I expected it to be.  It was funny, creepy AF and nostalgic to its core.  I loved how Muschietti did not make this a carbon copy of the original.  He threw in some classic lines that in my opinion had to be in there.  Beep beep Richie .  It’s hard to make a remake, especially of a horror film, and have it not be criticized before it even comes out.  Fans are typically partial to the original (if its a good one).  But sometimes, they get it right.  This remake was done right.  And although I knew they would eventually make a second part, in the end when the screen read – IT Chapter One, I lost it!  So excited to see what they do when the loser’s club are adults and return to combat Pennywise.  To IT (2017) – Y our hair is winter fire, January embers, my heart burns there too .

• Acting - 9/10 9/10
• Cinematography - 10/10 10/10
• Plot/Screenplay - 9/10 9/10
• Setting/Theme - 10/10 10/10
• Buyability - 9.5/10 9.5/10
• Recyclability - 9/10 9/10
• Entertainment - 9.5/10 9.5/10

About Sonia Rosario

An administrative professional and a writing novice. In this for the love of horror. 1/3 of the fabulous Horror Flick Chicks crew. Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter! Check out the Horror Flick Chicks Podcast streaming now on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts & I Heart Radio!

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4 thoughts on “ it movie review: chapter one ”.

This was such a great film! The kid actors were so amazing and better than some adult actors! 9.4 out of 10 is a good score for this film!

Glad you enjoyed my review!

I loved the movie the movie,It especially the beginning when Billy’s brother went outside and lost he’s boat. I think that’s the most important part in the movie because that part was interesting and was in the original movie. “It” was so good when I watch the movie i had to go download it on my phone. I like how the director kept the balloon part and the way his home is creepy like Pennywise. To me it had a little humor. The actor who played Pennywise did fantastic. He makes me want to run when I see any type of sewer drain.

Yes the film was so great! Glad you enjoyed it and my review :)

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It (United States, 2017)

King fans will note that the best movie adaptations of the writer’s work have been his non-horror stories: Stand by Me , The Shawshank Redemption , Misery, The Green Mile . His horror-related films have been of variable quality, with the best two being (arguably) The Shining (King would disagree) and Carrie . It may represent the best movie version of any King horror story – and it covers only half the material in the 1100+ page book.

The movie relates the events presented in the book’s “early” timeline – the one in which the protagonists are 11 years old – and time-shifts things from the late 1950s to the summer of 1989. The action centers around a group of outcasts who call themselves The Losers: Bill (Jaeden Lieberher), Richie (Finn Wolfhard), Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), Stanley (Wyatt Oleff), Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), Mike (Chosen Jacobs), and the only girl, Beverly (Sophia Lillis). Following the death of Bill’s younger brother, George, at the hands of the sewer-dwelling Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard), all seven of The Losers begin experiencing visions of the clown and/or physical embodiments of things they fear. Pennywise, they learn, emerges every 27 years in the town of Derry, Maine to kill children and feed on their terror. This group, however, is determined to fight back – something easier said than done in these circumstances.

For the cast, the filmmakers went with a group of little-known actors. This is true not only of the children but the adults as well. Pennywise is played with uncommon spookiness by Bill Skarsgard (the brother of Alexander and son of Stellan). Emerging from the long shadow of Tim Curry, whose interpretation of the clown was a highlight of the TV mini-series, Skarsgard makes Pennywise his own from the shocking first scene, which violates a Hollywood rule about how young children are treated on-screen. Jaeden Lieberher, who plays the stuttering Bill, was recently seen (although not by many) as the title character in The Book of Henry . Finn Wolfhard is probably best known for his role as Mike in Stranger Things, a TV series inspired in part by King’s writings that incorporates the same kind of childhood bonding that occurs among The Losers.

It isn’t perfect. There’s too much repetitive wandering around in the sewers and the running time seems long for the material as presented. There are credulity problems with the resolution but this is common in horror where the vanquishing of a creature of great power and evil typically requires a contrivance. However, horror, like a road movie, is more about the journey than the destination, and It offers a strong and creepy ride. Stephen King fans can rejoice that Hollywood has done justice to one of the author’s scary books.

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Movie Reviews

'the beast' jumps from 1910, to 2014, to 2044, tracking fear through the ages.

Justin Chang

Gabrielle and Louis (Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) meet in 1910 Paris, 2014 Los Angeles and again in 2044 in The Beast . Carole Bethuel/Kinology hide caption

Gabrielle and Louis (Léa Seydoux and George MacKay) meet in 1910 Paris, 2014 Los Angeles and again in 2044 in The Beast .

There's no easy way to sum up the work of the brilliant and maddening French writer-director Bertrand Bonello. In recent years, he's made a zombie thriller rooted in Haitian voodoo lore and an unconventional biopic of Yves Saint-Laurent. His most controversial title, Nocturama , is a hangout movie about a group of French youth carrying out terrorist attacks around Paris. Bonello's films have a unique way of blurring the intellectual and the aesthetic: Their gorgeous surfaces are often loaded with troubling and provocative ideas.

His latest movie is called The Beast , and it's one of the best and least classifiable things he's ever done. It's a wildly original adaptation of the 1903 Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle , about a man who dwells in a constant state of fear.

James' story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of being too cautious, of not embracing life and love to the fullest. Bonello takes this premise and spins it in several unexpected directions. First, he recasts the hesitant protagonist as a woman, named Gabrielle, played by the wonderful Léa Seydoux. Then he positions her in three different stories, set in three time frames, and suffused with elements of horror, mystery and science fiction. It's easier to follow than it sounds: Even when it's not entirely clear where or when we are, Bonello's filmmaking is so hypnotic, and Seydoux's performance so subtly mesmerizing, that you can't help getting caught up in the flow.

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The first story is the one that most closely resembles the novella. It's 1910, and Gabrielle is a renowned pianist who has a run-in at a Paris salon with a gentleman named Louis, played by the English actor George MacKay. In a setup that evokes the confounding 1961 classic Last Year at Marienbad , Gabrielle and Louis seem to vaguely recall having met before. There's a clear attraction between them, but Gabrielle, who's married, resists pursuing it. Her restraint will cost her in a climax that coincides with a real-life Parisian catastrophe, the Great Flood of 1910.

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The second story takes place in Los Angeles in 2014, and has some of the eerie menace of David Lynch 's masterpiece Mulholland Dr. Gabrielle is now an aspiring model and actor who's been housesitting for a wealthy Angeleno. Rattled by a violent earthquake one morning, she steps outside and runs into Louis, who's now a deeply disturbed incel who's been posting misogynist video rants online.

MacKay is utterly terrifying as this Louis, who's modeled on a man who killed six people in 2014 in Isla Vista, Calif. What makes this second segment so chilling is that, unlike in the novella, the protagonist's fear is not unfounded. The beast stalking Gabrielle is all too real.

The third story is the most elusive and intriguing. It's set in 2044, when the world is run by AI. Gabrielle plays a human who, to join the work force, must undergo a process that will rid her of her emotions. This segment, with its shades of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , explains the framework of the entire movie: It turns out that the 1910 and 2014 sections are remnants of Gabrielle's past lives, now being purged from her subconscious.

Bonello doesn't tell the stories one at a time; he jumps around and among them. He's tracking the sources of human alienation and anxiety through the ages, asking why, in every era, we find ways to disengage from life and the people around us. The movie is especially insightful about how technology evolves. Each chapter features an artificial human companion of sorts: a line of baby dolls in 1910, a talking doll in 2014, a robot friend in 2044. Along the way, Bonello also asks questions about the future of movies, a medium so overrun with CGI that it's become harder to tell what's real from what isn't.

As grim as The Beast sounds, it isn't entirely pessimistic about the state of the world. I left the movie feeling disturbed but also enthralled, and strangely reassured by Seydoux's presence in all three stories. The futuristic Gabrielle may have to divest herself of her feelings, but Seydoux's emotions are always within reach. The more unreal her surroundings become, the more hauntingly human her performance feels.

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‘Civil War’: What you need to know about A24’s dystopian action movie

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A24’s “Civil War,” the latest film from “Ex Machina” and “Men” director Alex Garland , imagines a third-term president ruling over a divided America and follows the journalists driving through the war-torn countryside on a mission to land his final interview. The movie is pulse-pounding and contemplative, as the characters tumble from one tense encounter to the next and ruminate on the nature of journalism and wartime photography.

In his review of the film, The Times’ Joshua Rothkopf wrote, “‘Civil War’ will remind you of the great combat films , the nauseating artillery ping of ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ the surreal up-is-down journey of ‘Apocalypse Now.’ It also bears a pronounced connection to the 2002 zombie road movie scripted by its writer-director Alex Garland, ‘28 Days Later.’”

Starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny as photojournalists, alongside Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson (and a scene-stealing, nerve-racking Jesse Plemons ), the film carries a reported production budget of $50 million and has already started to recoup the costs at the box office, earning $25.7 million in ticket sales in its first weekend in North America.

“Civil War” has also been a discourse juggernaut. Conversation on social media has focused on the lack of context given for the conflict at the heart of the film. In a recent column, The Times’ Mary McNamara wrote that “forcing the very real political divisions that plague this nation into vague subtext doesn’t even serve the purported pro-journalism nature of ‘Civil War.’”

Catch up on our coverage of the film below.

Review: ‘Civil War’ shows an America long past unraveling, which makes it necessary

Starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny as journalists chronicling a war at home, writer-director Alex Garland’s action film provokes a shudder of recognition.

April 11, 2024

Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny on the nightmarish ‘Civil War’: ‘No nation is immune’

Writer-director Alex Garland’s controversy-courting political fable about a violently divided America brings together two generation-defining actors.

April 4, 2024

What ‘Civil War’ gets right and wrong about photojournalism, according to a Pulitzer Prize winner

Carolyn Cole, a veteran L.A. Times photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of civil war in Liberia, breaks down the depiction of her profession in A24’s ‘Civil War.’

April 16, 2024

Inside the most unnerving scene in ‘Civil War’: ‘It was a stunning bit of good luck’

With a deeply disturbing turn by Jesse Plemons, one scene in “Civil War” encapsulates the film’s combustible political balancing act. It almost didn’t happen.

April 12, 2024

In trying to hedge its politics, ‘Civil War’ betrays its characters — and the audience

Alex Garland’s powerful war drama is ostensibly a tribute to the fourth estate. But the film is absent the examination of causes and consequences central to great journalism.

April 15, 2024

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After ‘Civil War’ and mainstream success, can indie darling A24 keep its cool?

‘Civil War’s’ overperformance at the box office proves that A24’s brand is strong enough to open a divisive $50-million about a dystopian America.

Entertainment & Arts

‘Civil War’ unites moviegoers at box office

Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War,’ about a strife-torn, near-future America, knocked ‘Godzilla x Kong’ from the top spot at the weekend box office.

April 14, 2024

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'Challengers' as sexy as a tennis movie can be

In beautiful and brutal sports drama, zendaya portrays a coach playing sophisticated games with her two charismatic suitors..

Pursued by both Art (Mike Faist, left) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor), Tashi (Zendaya) lures both into a makeout session in “Challengers.”

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The sweat-drenched and emotionally bruising “Challengers” from director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name”) joins the likes of “King Richard,” “Wimbledon,” “Final Set” and “Battle of the Sexes” as one of the best tennis movies ever. And it’s the game-set-and-match winner as the sexiest tennis film to scorch the big screen, thanks in large part to the Ménage a Tennis trio of Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, with Zendaya handling a layered role with cool aplomb, while O’Connor and Faist exude old-fashioned movie star charisma. The sex scenes aren’t all that explicit, and on two occasions, intimate and heated encounters are actually interrupted — but that just adds to the tension.

It’s the focus on the desire to excel that makes “Challengers” so compelling. It’s as much about the desire to compete, to be on top, as it is about the thrill of victory. (To paraphrase one character: We’re talking about tennis, right? Even when we’re not.)

With a timeline that rocks back and forth with the head-swiveling velocity of a top-tier tennis match, “Challengers” is set against the backdrop of a 2019 ATP Challenger Tour event, i.e., a second-level tournament sponsored by a local tire company and offering relatively modest cash prizes.

At 33, the blond, endorsement-friendly and robotically excellent Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), who is a U.S. Open victory away from a career Grand Slam, has lost his swagger and is at a career crossroads. Art’s wife and coach, the passionate but also coldly calculating Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), enters Art in this minor event so he can regain his confidence, and it should be a cakewalk to the championship. But things get interesting, and oh so complicated, when it turns out Art’s estranged best friend (and Tashi’s onetime lover), one Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), has entered the tournament and is on a collision course to face Art in the finals.

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There was a time when Patrick was considered Art’s equal or better in terms of raw talent, but he’s spent most of the last decade wallowing in a pool of partying and self-pitying, to the point where he’s sleeping in his car, and he uses hookup apps as a way of finding a place to stay for a night or two. Still, Patrick’s mere presence stirs up a complex cocktail of emotions for Art and Tashi — and let’s cue those flashback sequences to fill in the blanks.

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It’s the summer of 2006. Art and Patrick are the U.S. Open junior doubles champions known by the cringey moniker of “Fire and Ice,” and from the moment they first see Tashi dominating on the court with awesome, animalistic ferocity, they’re obsessed with her . After a Gatsby-level party where the boys trip over themselves to gain Tashi’s affections, she stuns them by showing up at their hotel room later that night, coaxes them into a three-way make-out session — and then makes her exit, saying she doesn’t want to be a “homewrecker.” This Tashi, she’s a clever and perceptive one. Manipulative as well.

Patrick and Tashi start seeing each other. Tashi puts her professional career on hold to take a scholarship and play for Stanford, where she sustains a horrific, career-ending injury. Art keeps hanging around, playing the long game, waiting for Patrick to blow up his relationship with Tashi, which he does, in spectacular fashion.

Cut to some 13 years later, and that Challengers match, and as was the case back in the day, it appears as if Tashi will side with whoever wins the match between Art and Patrick, even though she’s married to Art and has a daughter with him. It’s borderline ludicrous, like a tennis version of the love triangle in “Bull Durham,” but we come to see that for all of Tashi’s tennis acumen and sophistication, she has never truly gotten over her injury and hates the idea of settling into a comfortable life with a retired Art. She wants to ride with a competitor, with a WINNER.

As for the former Fire and Ice duo, what with all the voracious consumption of hot dogs and bananas and churros, not to mention a steam room confrontation between the two, even when they’re at each other’s throats, the homoerotic connection is always present and never subtle. There’s no doubt Art and Patrick have long been in love with Tashi, but they’ve loved each other on some level for an even longer amount of time. (The camera often lingers on the sinewy, graceful physiques of all three leads.)

With a biting and beautifully dense screenplay from Justin Kuritzkes, gorgeous cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and music by the iconic duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross capturing the electric heartbeat of the movie, “Challengers” fills every inch of its 131-minute running time with memorable sights and sounds. It’s outrageous and beautiful and brutal and exhilarating.

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Omen (Augure) review – Baloji offers secrets and sorcery in Congolese homecoming

Musician and film-maker’s story about a Belgian-Congolese man who takes his white wife to DRC to meet the family is complex, risky and bold

C ongolese-born rapper, musician and film-maker Baloji (né Serge Baloji Tshiani) was a prizewinner at Cannes last year with this feature directing debut: a dynamic, teemingly populated, multistranded and tonally elusive picture which I initially thought would benefit from comparisons with Jordan Peele’s horror classic Get Out. In fact, it’s more complicated than that.

Koffi (Marc Zinga) is a Congolese man living in Belgium and married to a white woman, Alice (Lucie Debay). They are about to have twins and Koffi feels that he cannot put it off any further: whatever his family will think, the couple must journey back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to let them see Alice and let them get used to the idea. It particularly means propitiating his fiercely conservative mother Mujila (Yves-Marina Gnahoua). He takes care to shave off his westernised afro, and even brings them a financial tribute, or “dowry”, of thousands of euros.

But at a tense welcome lunch (at which his father is mystifyingly not present), Alice learns that her husband’s childhood nickname was “zabolo”, or sorcerer, and when poor Koffi has a nosebleed and splatters blood over his sister’s baby, the terrified family’s simmeringly xenophobic dislike of Koffi taking a white wife explodes into irrational horror. Then and there, he is dragged into an exorcism ceremony, supposedly to save the innocent baby from his evil eye, all this in front of the aghast Alice. It is a preposterous but scary and humiliating ritual which Koffi must patiently endure so as not to make things worse.

This bizarre situation is not treated with irony or black-comic horror but as part of a complex, serious story. A second section explains the life of a street kid called Paco, with whom Koffi and Alice cross paths and who is traumatised by the death of his kid sister at the hands of a rival gang who affect the leopardskin clothing and headgear of the late President Mobutu. (It’s the first time I’ve seen this image on the movie screen since Leon Gast’s documentary When We Were Kings, about the Ali/Foreman rumble in the jungle in what in the 1970s was known as Zaire.) Another segment explains the life of Koffi’s equally alienated sister Tshala (Eliane Umuhire) who is about to emigrate to South Africa with her husband; they have an open relationship, but what her sisters call “this polyamory weirdness” has given her an STD. Finally, Koffi and Tshala’s mother takes centre stage.

The whole concept of a culture-clash is questioned and undermined by Baloji; culture, heritage, nationality and identity are all shapeshifting concepts here. Perhaps Omen doesn’t completely hang together but it is bold, risky, exciting film-making.

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Challengers

Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach is married to a champion on a losing streak. Her strategy for her husband's redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against his f... Read all Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach is married to a champion on a losing streak. Her strategy for her husband's redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against his former best friend and Tashi's former boyfriend. Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach is married to a champion on a losing streak. Her strategy for her husband's redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against his former best friend and Tashi's former boyfriend.

• Luca Guadagnino
• Justin Kuritzkes
• Josh O'Connor
• 24 User reviews
• 77 Critic reviews
• 85 Metascore
• 1 nomination

• Tashi Donaldson

• Art Donaldson

• Patrick Zweig
• Umpire (New Rochelle Final)

• Art's Physiotherapist

• Art's Security Guard
• (as a different name)
• Tashi's Mother
• Line Judge (New Rochelle Final)
• TV Sports Commentator (Atlanta 2019)

• Leo Du Marier

• Woman With Headset (Atlanta 2019)

• Motel Front Desk Clerk
• Motel Husband

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia To prepare for her role, Zendaya spent three months with pro tennis player-turned-coach, Brad Gilbert .

Tashi Donaldson : I'm taking such good care of my little white boys.

• Connections Referenced in OWV Updates: The Seventh OWV Awards - Last Update of 2022 (2022)

User reviews 24

• PedroPires90
• Apr 22, 2024
• When will Challengers be released? Powered by Alexa
• April 26, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Những Kẻ Thách Đấu
• Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
• Pascal Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 2 hours 11 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos

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‘The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady’ Review: Eva Green Surprises in French Blockbuster’s Less-Than-Faithful Finale

As in Richard Lester's two-part 1970s adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel, the villainous Milady takes the spotlight in the second half, though this time, the film inventively strays from the source.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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For readers of Alexandre Dumas’ novel, extravagant French adaptation “ The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady” packs its share of surprises: killing off important characters, sparing others and reimagining allegiances that have stood for nearly two centuries. For viewers of “Part I: D’Artagnan,” however, this swashbuckling sequel feels totally in keeping with what came before. Even the twists track, paying off what amounts to a nearly four-hour investment (not counting however many months audiences may have waited to see how the story ends).

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Bourboulon isn’t the first filmmaker to split Dumas’ novel down the middle. Half a century earlier, Richard Lester directed back-to-back features, dubbed “The Three Musketeers” and “The Four Musketeers” — though the latter was rechristened “They Call Her Milady” (“On l’appelait Milady”) in France, suggesting a precedent for accentuating Green’s character in the second half. She’s an infinitely more interesting source of obsession for D’Artagnan than Constance, who comes across as beatifically banal as played by Khoudri here. That in turn makes D’Artagnan’s efforts to rescue her seem rather uninspired, as if he could be doing something better with his time — like lusting after Milady.

In this telling, Constance stumbled upon the perpetrators of the plot to assassinate the king just before the first part ended, which at least imbues the character with a certain value. Still, it’s far more exciting to see D’Artagnan and Milady together, as they are early on, fighting side by side for a change. Bourboulon’s big innovation in these films can be seen in his action sequences, which typically unfold via elaborate oners — dynamic set-pieces designed to look as though they were captured in a single unbroken shot.

During an early escape, the camera chases after D’Artagnan, running along the lofty fortress parapet. When the young hero finds himself cornered, the lensman plunges right behind brave D’Artagnan into the moat. The effect is far more immersive than most adventure movies, which use quick cutting to place viewers in the fray. The way DP Nicolas Bolduc shoots these well-choreographed, minimally edited sequences, we feel like participants in the action, as in a knife fight that comes just a few scenes later, where the nimble camera is at knee level when D’Artagnan drives a blade through his opponent’s leg.

The other musketeers have less to do this time around, though each remains sworn to protecting the honor of others. Porthos has fallen in love with Aramis’ sister, Mathilde (Camille Rutherford), and together the two confront the cad who took advantage of her. In a rather confusing (but nonetheless exciting) subplot, Athos risks his life to rescue a comrade strapped to a wooden cross. He too has unfinished business with Milady — which remains the case all the way to the end, suggesting a thread that could inspire an off-canon “Part III,” should Bourboulon care to continue the epic.

Stateside, subtitles tend to relegate movies to art-houses, where the kind of young audiences most likely to appreciate such showy theatrics rarely set foot. Like last year’s “Napoleon,” this is megaplex entertainment at its most grand. Still, it would take some clever marketing to transform this import into a “Parasite”-style phenomenon, even if both well-made offerings have the same quality: They fill an entertainment niche that American movies have all but abdicated.

Reviewed online, Dec. 19, 2023. Running time: 121 MIN. (Original title: “Les trois mousquetaires: Milady”)

• Production: (France-Germany-Spain-Belgium) A Samuel Goldwyn Films (in U.S.), Pathé (in France) release of a Dimitri Rassam, Jérôme Seydoux presentation of a Chapter 2, Pathé Films, M6 Films production, in co-production with Constantin Films Produktion, ZDF, Deaplaneta, UMedia, with the participation of OCS, Canal+, M6, in association with Ufund, with the support of La Région Île-de-France, La Région Bretagne in partnership with the CNC, BNP Paribas. (World sales: Pathé, Paris.) Producer: Dimitri Rassam. Co-producer: Ardavan Safaee.
• Crew: Director: Martin Bourboulon. Screenplay: Matthieu Delaporte & Alexandre de La Patellière, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Camera: Nicolas Bolduc. Editor: Célia Lafitedupont. Music: Guillaume Roussel.
• With: François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Pio Marmaï, Eva Green, Louis Garrel, Vicky Krieps, Lyna Khoudri, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Éric Ruf, Marc Barbé, Patrick Mille, Julien Frison. (French dialogue)

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Album review

On ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ Taylor Swift Could Use an Editor

Over 16 songs (and a second LP), the pop superstar litigates her recent romances. But the themes, and familiar sonic backdrops, generate diminishing returns.

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By Lindsay Zoladz

If there has been a common thread — an invisible string, if you will — connecting the last few years of Taylor Swift’s output, it has been abundance.

Nearly 20 years into her career, Swift, 34, is more popular and prolific than ever, sating her ravenous fan base and expanding her cultural domination with a near-constant stream of music — five new albums plus four rerecorded ones since 2019 alone. Her last LP, “Midnights” from 2022, rolled out in multiple editions, each with its own extra songs and collectible covers. Her record-breaking Eras Tour is a three-and-a-half-hour marathon featuring 40-plus songs, including the revised 10-minute version of her lost-innocence ballad “All Too Well.” In this imperial era of her long reign, Swift has operated under the guiding principle that more is more.

What Swift reveals on her sprawling and often self-indulgent 11th LP, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is that this stretch of productivity and commercial success was also a tumultuous time for her, emotionally. “I can read your mind: ‘She’s having the time of her life,’” Swift sings on “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” a percolating track that evokes the glitter and adoration of the Eras Tour but admits, “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting ‘more.’” And yet, that’s exactly what she continues to provide, announcing two hours after the release of “Poets” that — surprise! — there was a second “volume” of the album, “The Anthology,” featuring 15 additional, though largely superfluous, tracks.

Gone are the character studies and fictionalized narratives of Swift’s 2020 folk-pop albums “Folklore” and “Evermore.” The feverish “Tortured Poets Department” is a full-throated return to her specialty: autobiographical and sometimes spiteful tales of heartbreak, full of detailed, referential lyrics that her fans will delight in decoding.

Swift doesn’t name names, but she drops plenty of boldfaced clues about exiting a long-term cross-cultural relationship that has grown cold (the wrenching “So Long, London”), briefly taking up with a tattooed bad boy who raises the hackles of the more judgmental people in her life (the wild-eyed “But Daddy I Love Him”) and starting fresh with someone who makes her sing in — ahem — football metaphors (the weightless “The Alchemy”). The subject of the most headline-grabbing track on “The Anthology,” a fellow member of the Tortured Billionaires Club whom Swift reimagines as a high school bully, is right there in the title’s odd capitalization: “thanK you aIMee.”

At times, the album is a return to form. Its first two songs are potent reminders of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance. The opener, “Fortnight,” a pulsing, synth-frosted duet with Post Malone, is chilly and controlled until lines like “I love you, it’s ruining my life” inspire the song to thaw and glow. Even better is the chatty, radiant title track , on which Swift’s voice glides across smooth keyboard arpeggios, self-deprecatingly comparing herself and her lover to more daring poets before concluding, “This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots.” Many Swift songs get lost in dense thickets of their own vocabulary, but here the goofy particularity of the lyrics — chocolate bars, first-name nods to friends, a reference to the pop songwriter Charlie Puth ?! — is strangely humanizing.

Taylor Swift’s New Album Reviewed

For all its sprawl, though, “The Tortured Poets Department” is a curiously insular album, often cradled in the familiar, amniotic throb of Jack Antonoff’s production. ( Aaron Dessner of the National, who lends a more muted and organic sensibility to Swift’s sound, produced and helped write five tracks on the first album, and the majority of “The Anthology.”) Antonoff and Swift have been working together since he contributed to her blockbuster album “1989” from 2014, and he has become her most consistent collaborator. There is a sonic uniformity to much of “The Tortured Poets Department,” however — gauzy backdrops, gently thumping synths, drum machine rhythms that lock Swift into a clipped, chirping staccato — that suggests their partnership has become too comfortable and risks growing stale.

As the album goes on, Swift’s lyricism starts to feel unrestrained, imprecise and unnecessarily verbose. Breathless lines overflow and lead their melodies down circuitous paths. As they did on “Midnights,” internal rhymes multiply like recitations of dictionary pages: “Camera flashes, welcome bashes, get the matches, toss the ashes off the ledge,” she intones in a bouncy cadence on “Fresh Out the Slammer,” one of several songs that lean too heavily on rote prison metaphors. Narcotic imagery is another inspiration for some of Swift’s most trite and head-scratching writing: “Florida,” apparently, “is one hell of a drug.” If you say so!

That song , though, is one of the album’s best — a thunderous collaboration with the pop sorceress Florence Welch, who blows in like a gust of fresh air and allows Swift to harness a more theatrical and dynamic aesthetic. “Guilty as Sin?,” another lovely entry, is the rare Antonoff production that frames Swift’s voice not in rigid electronics but in a ’90s soft-rock atmosphere. On these tracks in particular, crisp Swiftian images emerge: an imagined lover’s “messy top-lip kiss,” 30-something friends who “all smell like weed or little babies.”

It would not be a Swift album without an overheated and disproportionately scaled revenge song, and there is a doozy here called “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” which bristles with indignation over a grand, booming palette. Given the enormous cultural power that Swift wields, and the fact that she has played dexterously with humor and irony elsewhere in her catalog, it’s surprising she doesn’t deliver this one with a (needed) wink.

Plenty of great artists are driven by feelings of being underestimated, and have had to find new targets for their ire once they become too successful to convincingly claim underdog status. Beyoncé, who has reached a similar moment in her career, has opted to look outward. On her recently released “Cowboy Carter,” she takes aim at the racist traditionalists lingering in the music industry and the idea of genre as a means of confinement or limitation.

Swift’s new project remains fixed on her internal world. The villains of “The Tortured Poets Department” are a few less famous exes and, on the unexpectedly venomous “But Daddy I Love Him,” the “wine moms” and “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best” who cluck their tongues at our narrator’s dating decisions. (Some might speculate that these are actually shots at her own fans.) “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is probably the most satisfyingly vicious breakup song Swift has written since “All Too Well,” but it is predicated on a power imbalance that goes unquestioned. Is a clash between the smallest man and the biggest woman in the world a fair fight?

That’s a knotty question Swift might have been more keen to untangle on “Midnights,” an uneven LP that nonetheless found Swift asking deeper and more challenging questions about gender, power and adult womanhood than she does here. It is to the detriment of “The Tortured Poets Department” that a certain starry-eyed fascination with fairy tales has crept back into Swift’s lyricism. It is almost singularly focused on the salvation of romantic love; I tried to keep a tally of how many songs yearningly reference wedding rings and ran out of fingers. By the end, this perspective makes the album feel a bit hermetic, lacking the depth and taut structure of her best work.

Swift has been promoting this poetry-themed album with hand-typed lyrics, sponsored library installations and even an epilogue written in verse. A palpable love of language and a fascination with the ways words lock together in rhyme certainly courses through Swift’s writing. But poetry is not a marketing strategy or even an aesthetic — it’s a whole way of looking at the world and its language, turning them both upside down in search of new meanings and possibilities. It is also an art form in which, quite often and counter to the governing principle of Swift’s current empire, less is more.

Sylvia Plath once called poetry “a tyrannical discipline,” because the poet must “go so far and so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit. The sharpest moments of “The Tortured Poets Department” would be even more piercing in the absence of excess, but instead the clutter lingers, while Swift holds an unlit match.

Taylor Swift “The Tortured Poets Department” (Republic)

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history  by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?  

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex  at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence  to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .