Welcome to JOE’s 31 Days Of Hallowe’en. For each and every day of October, we’ll be bringing you a horror movie to tuck into for the lead up to the big night. It could be new, old, an undiscovered gem, or a classic you’ll have seen a thousand times. No matter what it is, we guarantee you that it is brilliant, and it is SCARY.
For Day 30, we’re looking back over 2017’s record breaking, landmark moment in horror, It.
It isn’t every day that a horror movie comes out and essentially changes the landscape of cinema as we know it.
Sure, a few movies arrive and then it feels like every horror film that follows is basically a cheap facsimile: Scream brought about more slashers, Hostel brought in torture porn, The Blair Witch Project gave us years of “found footage, The Conjuring brought us back to haunted homes, and so on and so on.
But what It did was make Hollywood sit up and take notice of the too-often-sidelined genre, previously just a way of making a quick buck from a cheap investment. Horror could now be considered a legitimate blockbuster, if only given more love and care than the usual cheapy way we’re used to getting scary movies.
At the time of writing, It was closing in on $700 million at the worldwide box office, more money than “actual blockbusters” like Logan, Transformers 5, or Dunkirk.
It became a must-watch movie because it was marketed so fantastically, because it felt like a labour of love, and, most of all, because it was actually good.
Clip via Worldwide Media TV
While far from perfect – poor Mike pops up at the start and the movie seems to forget he exists for the next hour, and at times it feels like it is leaning a little too heavily on the “Stranger Things is really popular right now” vibe of 80’s nostalgia, and overall it isn’t actually all that scary – there is so much here that is already immediately iconic.
The vicious re-do of the Georgie scene, every arrival of the red balloon, the creepy painting lady (a scene that managed to freak out Stephen King himself), the projector scene, the first daylight attack in the creepy house… and, of course, Bill Skarsgard’s incredible portrayal of Pennywise The Clown.
Coming across like an ageless curse on the town of Derry, one that has lulled the parents into just accepting the fate that sometimes some of their kids will go missing, never to be seen again, Skarsgard plays the character like he can barely be bothered pretending to be anything approaching human. He’ll get bored mid-conversation, almost as if he can’t quite comprehend why he isn’t already gnawing on the flesh of the young child in front of him. But then he’ll get caught up in the moment of bringing the fears of the kids to the surface, practically getting off on it, as if that fear makes them all the tastier.
Two years to go before before It: Chapter 2 arrives in cinemas, and that is a sequel that already has a lot to live up to.
Check out our previous recommendations below:
Day 2 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Day 13 – Friday The 13th (1980)
Day 19 – The Blair Witch Project
Day 25 – Dawn Of The Dead (2004)
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
