"It (2017)" - Creating Horror through Character | 5 Nights of Halloween #1

We're in somewhat of a horror renaissance. We've moved on from the cheesy slasher flicks of the past and from the repetitive, some times nauseating found footage films from the earlier part of the century into this new era of horror storytelling that combines both elements of terror with personal stories. In our fears we are revealed. This is no more true than in the film It.

The adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 novel brings its fare share of heart and scares to the table. Set in the year 1988, the film tells the story of seven children in a small town in Maine and their battle with a shapeless immortal space demon who takes the form of a clown in order to kills children and feast on their fears. Bit of a dumb description? Maybe.

Please be advised: some major spoilers ahead. No details about the plot, but the finale of the film is described in detail towards the end of the piece.

The monster, or Pennywise, or It, or whatever you want to call it, casts a shadow over the town of Derry, Maine. It comes out ever 27 years to stalk the streets, but even in the time between his appearances, it hold the town in a reign of darkness. It holds the town in this endless state of  'looking the other way'. The townspeople ignore the blatant issues and problems in the town.

And in this pit of darkness, we see the true charm of It.

Jaeden Lieberher behind the scenes of It.

The film breaks down human characters into their worst parts. The shroud of evil Pennywise creates brings this demon out in everyone. In this evil, we see the true characters come out. We are shown the worst parts of human nature and the problems that cause it. We are shown a cross section of human fear and anxiety.

The losers club, our main characters, demonstrate so many primal fears. Bill shows us what it's like to be rejected by those around us, Ben and Richie show us to be made fun of for our appearance, Stan shows us the fear of being rejected for our race, Mike reveals the brokenness we fear with our parents, Eddie shows us our fears of the unknown, and lastly, Beverly shows us our ancient childhood fear of growing up.

Even the villains of the story reflect these ideas, but with a darker twist. The Bowers Gang, the archnemeses of the Losers Club, could be easily written as one-note, 1980s high school movie bullies, but instead the film writes these dark, depraved, brilliant characters. Henry Bowers' broken relationship with his father turns him from just a villain, into something far more interesting. If you compare him to the Losers Gang, you realize he's just like them. He has fears. He has brokenness. But at the end of the day, he chose the dark instead of the light.

It builds fear through having the audience feel so strongly for all of the films characters. You can identify with all of the struggles presented. They are all just an exaggeration of the problems we suffer from every day. We have the problems of the Losers Club. We find our darkness in the tragedy of It. The terrifying hallucinations and the shadow that Pennywise casts on the town of Derry makes us afraid too because we know that our own fears are hiding in the next alley, or in the abandoned corner of the basement, somewhere, Pennywise has something truly evil ready for all of us.

Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise in It.

On top of all of the intellectual horror the film relies on, it also features some good, proper horror. The film builds up fantasticly terrifying sequences in expert fashion. It doesn't waste its fear factors on cheap jump scares, but on scenes that acts almost like jokes.

Image a comedian. When a comedian tells a story, they start with a simple premise, and then slowly adding to it making the joke funnier. And then there's the punch line. The whole story has been in build up to one moment of pure comedy. It does the same thing here. It starts a scary scene with a simple premise. It then adds a twist to it that we'll get the scare from. It slowly cracks the normality of the scene with this twist in reality. It all builds into one final moment, more often then not, ending in the reveal of the clown in some terrifying disguise.

Here's an example. There is one scene part way through the film in which the Losers Club is flipping through a slide show of old photos from the town of Derry. The slide show shows some old sketches of Pennywise that date back hundreds of years. That's the crack in the scene: Pennywise is present in the photos. The projector begins to move and change slide on its own showing a single photo of a family. It then becomes faster, and the image of the family starts to move. The mother's hair covers her face, then moves away from it again revealing the face of Pennywise. Pennywise begins to crawl out of the slide show - the punchline. We've called back to the idea that Pennywise was in the show the entire time, and makes one massive moment of terror.

The Losers Club in Pennywise's lair at the end of It.

Then the film itself is like on big, giant scare. The film stacks scenes like the one mentioned above on top of each other. It slowly breaks down the normality of the world and introduces even more horrifying.

At the end of the film, the Losers club breaks into Pennywise's lair to discover the ultimate horror: the bodies of hundreds of children all floating in a massive spire reaching into a skylight above the sewer based dwelling.

We hear this recurring line of "you'll float too!" being echoed be various characters in the film. We finally understand what it means. They all float down there. We have reached the punch line of the film. All of the clues and all of the set-up has paid off. In a good comedy set, this is the part where we, the audience, would be dying of laughter. The story makes sense. There is a point. In this film, this is where we should be the most horrified. Everything has paid off.

It creates horror in two very different ways. It first builds the horror of of the characters and their inner demons and problems. Second, it creates scares in a much more physical sense through carefully constructed scenes that build on top of each other. It is a prime example of how to scare your audience. While maybe it isn't as meaningful or emotionally complex as other films we will discuss later in this series, but for what it is, it's a damn good movie. It deserves to be remembered as one of the best horror films of our day.


Up Next: A Quiet Place



It Quick Facts
Directed by: Andy Muschietti
Written by: Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, Gary Dauberman
Stars: Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgard, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, and Finn Wolfhard
Released: September 8, 2017
Run time: 135 minutes