OCTOBER PROMO: CREEPY CINEMA 4

IT (2017) Review

IT (2017) Review

You already know what this movie is. You’ve seen the trailers, maybe you’ve seen the mini-series from the 90’s, or read Stephen King’s novel upon which this is based. A killer clown terrorizes a group of kids in a small town. There’s more to IT than that—“It” isn’t just a clown, it’s everything you’ve ever been afraid of.

I’ll cut right to the chase. This movie is superb. The acting, writing, directing, everything is on point. 

When you have a story featuring mainly child and teen actors, casting is everything. They nailed it with this cast. There isn’t a single weak link. Every kid is great, but for me Finn Wolfhard (from Stranger Things) as Richie was the standout. Even Georgie, featured heavily in the marketing for this film, makes a huge impression for what little screen time he has, and the adults are often as terrifying, if not more terrifying, than the monsters pursuing the kids. 

The music and visuals, too, were huge highlights for me. The music accentuates the horror throughout, and has a lot of range. At times it’s like an old school John Williams score with an enhanced flute section, other times it’s more modern with intense bass drops and shrieking strings, but it works to build the atmosphere, as well. The cinematography is sharp, and many of the shot choices are inventive and even artfully done. 

The story is familiar, obviously, and scenes you may remember from the 90’s mini-series are re-done, but this time around, it earns that R-rating. This movie went places I didn’t think it would go. They push the boundaries. My jaw dropped several times throughout. 

There are lots of elements here that, on paper, sound very cliché (the old dark house, for instance), but they don’t feel cliché because they’re given a new spin, making it feel refreshing and freaky in a different way, yet also in a way that’s a throwback to horror movies of old. 

I watch a lot of horror movies, but rarely get genuinely scared watching them. There were several scenes/moments in IT that had me truly frightened—personally, it’s the scariest movie I’ve seen since The Conjuring. Tons of the imagery is straight-up nightmarish, and like The Shining (yeah, I’m comparing this to The Shining) the scares are varied throughout. There are gory moments, effective jump scares, creepy visuals, horrific concepts, and a lot of it doesn’t even come from Pennywise.

But of course you want me to talk about the clown. I don’t know Bill Skarsgard from any other roles, so I was iffy on him portraying Pennywise the dancing clown (minor spoiler: he actually does dance at one point), but Skarsgard is terrifying. The voice, the movements, the subtle elements of his performance, it all adds up to a compelling and disturbing performance, aided by the excellent makeup effects.   

I can’t say I agree with what some critics and fans are saying about this being the best horror movie/movie in general in many years, but I also can’t say I had any big problems with IT, either. Though it’s not without a few questionable moments of cgi, or a couple cheap jump scares, or one or two characters that seem underdeveloped compared to others, overall it’s really well done, and one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, which is actually saying a lot. 

Like I said in my intro, you already know what IT is, so you probably already know if it’s the kind of movie for you or not. I will air on the side of caution, though. This movie is scary. The opening scene sets the tone and pace perfectly. You’ll know if IT is too much for you to handle before the opening titles even conclude. 

If you are a Stephen King fan or just a horror fan in general, though, you can’t miss this movie in theaters. If you liked the mini-series, you’ll like this adaptation, too. If you didn’t like the mini-series, you probably will like this interpretation. If you don’t know anything about IT and just want a scary good time with compelling characters and a well-written script, you’re in for a real treat, because you likely won’t see some of the most-horrific scenes coming. Basically, any and all viewers who want to see IT should be satisfied. 

IT is a modern horror movie with old-school sensibilities, a surprising amount of humour and heart, and it’s a lot of fun. There are tons of scares throughout, the majority of which work really well, but even better is the cast of interesting characters. This movie is going to be huge (it’s already breaking September box office records), and I can’t wait to see IT again at the theater as Halloween rapidly approaches.  

Top Five Worst DVD/Blu-ray Finds: C.C.C Issue #65

Top Five Worst DVD/Blu-ray Finds 

A month ago, I looked at some of the best finds I have made in my time as a DVD/Blu-ray collector. Now, it’s time to look at the scams and the disappointments that sometimes come with the territory of collecting…

5. Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend: a dark secret (2013)

If you read my previous CCC list (or are at all familiar with my blog), you know I love dinosaurs and any movies with dinosaurs. In my hunt for films featured in the documentaries I watched as a kid, there was one that eluded me for many years, the 1985 family film Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend. For its time, it had revolutionary animatronic effects, bringing to life massive long-necked dinosaurs in the African jungle (the premise is based on the cryptid Mokele Mbembe), including a young member of the species whom the human explorers in the film refer to as Baby. 

I had actually rented the full film from the video store one time, but saw it at such a young age, I couldn’t remember anything specific. For years, I searched, but could never find a copy anywhere. 

Sometimes, DVDs pop up in the most random stores. In 2013 I happened across a 3-movie collection at a local office supplies store, of all places. It had two throwaway family movies with it, and was $ 9.99, so it wasn’t a case where buying a value pack made for a better deal. But it had Baby, and that’s all I cared about. It cost ten bucks, but I was sure it would be worth it. I had finally found this legendary dinosaur flick!

Turns out, it was a very unfortunate case of all the good dinosaur footage was used in the documentaries I had seen, which amounted to a few minutes, at best. The majority of the animatronic dinosaur scenes are clunky and unremarkable. The rest of the film is dull, plodding, and generic. It wasn’t a huge loss, from a financial standpoint, but after all those years of wondering what the full movie would be like based on that small amount of footage, it was a colossal disappointment.

4. Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo and Ants: two bug movies that bug me (2008)

Any DVD/Blu-ray collector will tell you that stopping in at Walmart during Boxing Day is a must. In my early days of collecting, I found a DVD two-pack of killer animal movies for five dollars. What a deal! I thought. They looked old, and indeed they were, both having come out in 1977, but what I didn’t know was they were both made-for-TV.

It turned out Ants (alternately known as It Happened At Lakewood Manor) was filmed at a location very near where I lived—as I discovered when my mom walked in to the room while I was watching it for the first time and she remarked she knew where the hotel in the film was. She also remembered when they were making the actual film, because back in the day, it was a big deal to have a movie shooting in such a quaint place. 

Ants is straight-up one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It appeared in a very early CCC list (#15), Top Ten Worst Direct-to-DVD Films. Though Ants wasn’t made as a direct-to-DVD feature, I included it anyway. It has absolutely no redeeming values. 

As for Tarantulas? I was so disheartened after watching Ants, I never got through it all, until I forced myself to watch it years later for Clayton’s Creepy Cinema: Animal Mayhem and reviewed it. I’d put it on about the same bottom-of-the-barrel-level as Ants. That’s probably why they were paired together in the first place. 

3. Alien vs. Predator: Blu-ray vs. DVD (2012)

The two Alien vs. Predator films are not very good, especially in comparison to the original films in their respective franchises, but in all honesty, I still enjoy them simply for the action-packed B-movies that they are. 

In 2012, I decided to re-visit all of the Alien and Predator films, because Prometheus had come out that summer, and up to this point, I only had the movies on DVD, but I was already well into buying Blu-rays at that point, so I decided it was time for an AVP upgrade. I paid twenty bucks for both AVP movies on Blu-ray—not that expensive, I reasoned—and was pleased to find they included the unrated versions of both. Often, a standard Blu-ray release lacked the special features of the collector’s edition DVDs (in the case of the AVP movies, I had collectors versions of both). 

Another thing that often happens with cheap Blu-ray releases is the image gets copied and plastered on a Blu-ray disc, but it isn’t upgraded to full 1080 P HD. That’s what happened with these blu rays. This means nothing to the average consumer, but I was extremely pissed off when I put on the Blu-ray, then put on the DVD right after, and found the picture quality was practically identical. I paid more money for nothing. 

This is the only time that something like this has happened to me, but it’s not the only time it’s been done. The Hills Have Eyes Blu-ray reviews on Amazon were weirdly low, averaging 1 or 2 stars. Surprise: they re-released the DVD version on Blu-ray, without any upscaling. If you already owned the DVD, it was as good as owning the Blu-ray. Another instance of this was with The Terminator, which I waited out until they re-released a Blu-ray that was actually advertised as “re-mastered”. A low-brow money grab, is all it is, and I learned about it the hard way. 

2. Spider-Man 2.1/The Villains of Spider-Man 3: wasn’t worth the .1 (2007)

Prior to the release of Spider-Man 3 (which I was beyond pumped for), Spider-Man 2 was re-released on DVD, but this was no ordinary re-release. I discovered it at Walmart for 30 bucks, which seemed like a steep price, but it was called Spider-Man 2.1. What did that mean? Well, it seemed to indicate this was an extended version, with more action! Whoa! Cool! And what really sold me on it was the bonus disc it came with: The Villains of Spider-Man 3, a sneak-peek documentary! That was it. I had to have it. 

I was really into DVD special features around this time. To me, it was still a relatively new concept, to have behind-the-scenes footage and filmmakers explaining how they achieved the movie magic that had mystified me for so long. I popped in the Villains disc first and was awe-struck by the explanation of how they created Sand Man, and Goblin, and Venom—though Venom was still being kept secret, they weren’t showing him as much as I wanted…Then the screen faded to black. 

It’s over? Already? That can’t be right.  

I looked at the DVD. In small print at the bottom of the cover—which I must point out, was blocked by the cardboard packaging enclosing the two DVDs—said, Total run time: Approx. 13 minutes. 

Wow. Had I been scammed or what? 

Not only did the documentary reveal next-to-nothing about the new movie, Spider-Man 2.1 wasn’t even a superior director’s cut. I liked the original version better! The added action moments were minimal and unnecessary, and every other addition was silly. Ten years later, and I’m still pissed. Re-releasing a movie at an unreasonably high price is one thing, but false advertising is another. Since this infuriating incident, I’ve been very cautious when it comes to buying re-releases of my favourite films. 

1. Alien 3000: easily 3000-times worse than I expected (2014) 

Remember that CCC list I mentioned? Worst movies released direct-to-DVD? Guess which movie was #2 on that list? 

I remember talking about Alien 3000 at the pub with a friend. He asked if I had seen it. I knew about it, I had seen the DVD at the video store many years prior, but never rented it, though was curious to see it, based on the title and cover alone. I knew it would be a rip-off of Alien, given how the creature on the cover looked, but it did look cool. “Oh no,” my friend warned, “it’s sooooo bad.” 

Even after this conversation, which I recall with perfect clarity, I still bought it—only because there was a video store selling out and I needed one more movie to fulfill the 10 movies for 20 bucks deal. So I paid two bucks for Alien 3000, how bad could it really be? 

It wasn’t worth two dollars. It wasn’t worth any amount of currency, in any form. 

Alien 3000 is not only one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, I found it offensively bad—the kind of bad where you can tell the filmmakers were just laughing because they knew they would fool some lame fans into watching it and paying money for it, when in reality it was a total piece of shit. It was like a giant middle finger on screen for 90 minutes. Instead of reiterating everything I hate about it, I’ll just copy and paste some of what I said in CCC List #15:

Scene after scene, I kept saying to myself: “Ok, it can’t get any worse than this...” and every time, I was proven wrong. The plot is about this invisible alien that hides gold in a cave, which a team of marines are trying to get. What bothered me the most were the characters. These “marines” are the most incompetent people I have ever seen in a movie ever. They actually shoot at the alien with a giant paintball gun which allows them to see it. Every line of dialogue spewed from everyone’s mouths made my ears want to seal shut.

 

The funny part is, I later told that same friend from the pub that I bought it from the video store, and it turned out that was the very copy he had rented years earlier. 

Enough about Alien 3000. It’s without a doubt the worst movie I have ever purchased. I just hope I don’t accidently buy something that tops it someday.