Stephen King’s It was the bestselling book of 1986 and the source material for an enormously successful two-part miniseries on ABC in 1990 that has been shown regularly on cable TV ever since. The ridiculously overlong novel reads like King is parodying himself; the miniseries is obvious and indifferently acted in the manner of most of the television of the time. But the central conceit of It—a grim-faced clown named Pennywise who turns out to be an ancient extraterrestrial demon literally feeding off the fear of the residents in a small Maine town—remains a stroke of genius. And a staggeringly effective Tim Curry gave King’s creation enduring life on the small screen.
It turns out that It’s presence in the national memory bank quietly generated decades of unexpected compound interest that paid off last weekend. A new movie version, preceded by a potent trailer and a good poster, broke records at the box office with $123 million. That bests the opening weekend of any other horror movie ever made by $70 million and more than doubles the best first-weekend take between September and Thanksgiving. It will be the most successful of the staggering 100 or so adaptations of King’s work on the big and small screens. And since the movie only covers half of the novel’s story, the inevitable sequel may well outstrip this one when it is released in 2019. A 31-year-old piece of intellectual property is on track to gross $1 billion at the box office. Those are superhero numbers.
Indeed, at present, the only commercially reliable releases come in two genres: the superhero movie and the horror movie. The superhero movies are inescapable, even for us coots. Not so the horror movies, which tend to fly under the radar in American Grown-Up Land. You might not even have heard of one of the summer’s few box-office triumphs, Annabelle: Creation. It’s the fourth film in a series known as the Conjuring franchise—a mash-up of The Exorcist and classic scary stories about possessed dolls. This picture has grossed $100 million domestically ($280 million worldwide) on a $15 million budget, while Wonder Woman has earned $410 million domestically ($820 million worldwide) on a $150 million budget. Wonder Woman has made far more money, but in relation to cost, Annabelle: Creation was the summer champion.
What these genres have in common is that they promise to deliver experiences that cannot really be duplicated at home. Just as you need a theater with a gigantic screen and great sound to get the full impact of a superhero picture, a horror movie sells itself to its viewers on the grounds that you need to be away from home in a dark and somewhat unfamiliar space to have it work its dark magic on you. Creating and sustaining a mood of unsettled surprise is nearly impossible if you can stop and start a horror movie at will, and if your mother or little brother or girlfriend can walk through the room while you’re watching it.
It does a creditable job making that case for itself and offers a few impressive scares along the way. That’s what its trailer promised and why people came out in droves. But in the end, It works because it does what any good movie does. Its director, Andy Muschietti, and its three screenwriters establish strong characters in a vivid setting and get actors who make you care about what happens to the people they’re playing. Muschietti found seven terrific kid performers who do a beautiful job of playing the experience of being menaced—not only by the evil clown but also by the moral corruption in their small town that the clown’s centuries-long existence (literally beneath the surface) seems to have generated there. One of them, the authoritative Sophia Lillis, is likely to be a star for the rest of her life.
The movie’s weaknesses are the weaknesses built into King’s original story. The nature of the clown’s supernatural abilities is never made clear. A villain’s supernatural powers have to be limited in some way or there’s no story. But we’re never told what Pennywise’s limits are, really; he seems at some moments able to kill and at other times unable. And is Pennywise only picking on our heroes, or is every kid in the town being haunted by him? The lack of clarity here keeps It from being more than pretty good. But given the other fare on offer at the multiplex these sorry days, just being pretty good can be accounted a triumph of a sort.
John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic.
