So one of the most terrifying stories ever told is coming back. After the original spent 27 years freaking us out, a remake is coming, and we finally got to catch a glimpse of what it will all look like in an all new trailer!
The trailer hit the internet only a few days ago, and within 24hours of its debut at CinemaCon, it smashed global traffic records with 197 million views. Quickly, this trailer became a global sensation, becoming viral while trending across Twitter and Facebook, and rising to the top of the Reddit Homepage.
A new take on Stephen King’s IT is coming to cinemas on September 8. This book has been brought to the screen before, as a mini-series where Tim Curry gave life to the vicious clown Pennywise. This new version stars Bill Skarsgard in the lead role, and it was directed by Andreas Muschietti.
So, the premise of the original film was that in 1960, seven pre-teens fought an evil demon who posed as a child-murdering clown. Thirty years later, when it comes back to their quiet little town, those misfits reunite to try and stop the demon – forever this time.
The two 90 minute movies did great with the audiences. IT was original, unpredictable, faithful to the novel and much more. The director Tommy Lee Wallace managed to transfer onto the screen that spirit of nostalgia, friendship and gut-wrenching fear into these movies. There were a few flaws – first part was amazing, and the child actors really pulled their weight and made us interested in the story, a job their older counterparts did a bit worse. Also, most people hated the fact that the book was “toned down” and the gore was set to a bare minimum, if it were completely alike to the novel, it would have been twice as scary. And, the biggest letdown was the ending. The book ending was so bizarre that it was difficult to transfer it to the screen, so the bad special effects ending disappointed many.
Which is why we are looking forward to this rework.
The official synopsis tells us this much:
“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.
“IT” stars Bill Skarsgård (“Allegiant,” TV’s “Hemlock Grove”) as the story’s central villain, Pennywise. An ensemble of young actors also star in the film, including Jaeden Lieberher (“Midnight Special”), Jeremy Ray Taylor (“Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip”), Sophia Lillis (“37”), Finn Wolfhard (TV’s “Stranger Things”), Wyatt Oleff (“Guardians of the Galaxy”), Chosen Jacobs (upcoming “Cops and Robbers”), Jack Dylan Grazer (“Tales of Halloween”) and Nicholas Hamilton (“Captain Fantastic”).”
While looking at the trailer, we have to admit, we have gotten a bit concerned.
In 2015, director Cary Fukunaga (True Detective), walked away from this picture, leaving Muschietti to helm a new version of the script all on his own. Disgruntled Fukunaga commented afterward that that script is a much more conventional version of the iconic horror, than the experimental film he wanted to make.
And when you link the word “conventional” to a horror so famously unconventional as King’s IT is, it seems like it should translate into “dull”. And, to be honest, the trailer does feel a bit more conventional than it should. If you take a careful look, you will notice that it is a scene by scene copy of the original. A kid’s paper boat floats into a storm drain where Pennywise lures. We see a glimpse of that boy’s brother, Lieberher’s Bill and a group of his friends forming a club in order to get to the bottom of Georgie’s disappearance while more and more kids start to vanish from the town of Derry, Maine. We already saw this in the original, just this time around it has much better special effects, and if that is everything this movie has to offer – we will be vastly disappointed.
But, we still have high hopes. Even though it seems that Muschieti painstakingly replicated certain elements of the novel, we have a feeling that seeing through this movie will be like seeing through the tricks of IT itself. When September comes, we will have to look very carefully, past the modern enhancements and jump scares, in order to see how well this picture is reimagining our childhood terrors, and hopefully reviving them.