Genius Review (Spoilers): Pennywise the Dancing Psychiatrist
The Clown who knows more than just how to scare you
Eh, this is kinda spoilery. Beware.
Let me get a couple things out of the way before we begin. There’s no need to compare Bill Skarsgård to Tim Curry. They both created great characters. (Tim Curry ruined my childhood and still haunts me.) Moving on.
No, the newest chapter of the IT franchise was not the scariest movie you’ll ever see. If that is your primary motivator to attend and qualify a horror film (and reasonably so) you won’t chart this up near the top. However, Steven King’s IT does provide us with a departure of the recent era flooded with supernatural scares based on demon possession and satanic rituals (see: The Conjuring 1–13, The Nun, Annabelle 1–7, The Haunting in _____ [insert city here] et al.). The Satan era was a departure from the late 90’s and early 2000’s slasher genre (see: Hostel, Saw(s), reboots of Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th , Texas Chainsaw).
SATAN is in your teddy bear
The demon genre plays on our irrational fears. It juices every last bit of terror from the pulp of our daily lives. The odds are low that a crazed serial killer with a history of skinning teenagers is lurking in your third story condo on a main street in a chill suburb of Chicago. There’s no farm houses for miles. But if your childhood stuffed animal might be possessed with a demon trying to break into the physical realm — heck, that noise you heard could mean death.
Naked and Afraid
The slasher genre, other than for the titillation for Monster-chugging high school boys, plays on innocence and vulnerability. The man in the mask has no lines, no reason, no personality. He’s just bigger, stronger, and able to find you anywhere. These films generally take place in a setting you’d never hope to find yourself. The broken down bus in a cornfield. The aforementioned farm house off Route whatever. The home of the family for whom you are babysitting that has WAY TOO MANY windows.
Pennywise came to feast, not to hunt
To anyone not familiar with the book, the go-to description of IT is as follows:
Every 27 years, an evil creature awakens, taking the form of a clown intent on manifesting children’s worst fears, to satiate his hunger by stalking and eating Derry’s youngsters.
This isn’t wrong, but it’s not transparent enough. The above sets up the hunter model akin to Jason Vorhees, but masked baddy, Pennywise is not. Neither is he Freddy, trapping people in fear in order to kill for revenge. Most of the hunting, lurking, stalking and killing in IT is secondary. Fear is the primary, and as described in the book, the Clown is “salting the meat” with the children’s terror. But Pennywise isn’t looking for ways to scare these kids. He’s simply attempting to make them dwell on what has already traumatized them. He wants his meal served to him after marinating in personal damnation. Children, of course, are the most innocent, and therefore, the most tasty. Many moviegoers will leave the film, not satisfied with the level of adrenaline the terror has made to course through them. The film is full of jump scares at the end of tension-building scenarios, but you’re not stuck-over-night-in-a-haunted-house scared; the kind where you’re tired at the end of the film from all the fist clenching. In fact, horror vets may even wonder why there’s so much comedy in this supposed “classic” horror franchise. It’s Bill Hader for goodness sake. Stefon. What genre is this?
Where’s the Clown?
I went to the movie with my lady, and after the first few scenes she leaned over and said, “That’s strike two.” You see, two of the earliest scenes were of a gruesome and violent hate crime where a vile brute accosts two men leaving the fair, eventually throwing one of them off the bridge into the river (where Pennywise eats him: see above) and another where a grown up Beverly is punched and whipped with a belt by her stomach churning husband.
That was strike two for her. We are in a second movie about the horrific murder of children…and we still haven’t seen the protagonist, but she’s over here telling me this movie has two strikes.
Well, it wouldn’t be long that she’d be seeing strike three because in comes Stanley Uris in a sorrowful and hopeless suicide scene.
and still no clown.
King’s behemoth IT novel has the same feeling. As with the film, the early parts are filled with neglectful parents, abusive spouses, a father killing his son with a hammer out of rage, runaways, gang violence and closed off townspeople turning a blind eye to evil.
SATAN really is in your teddy bear
And in your garage, and in the pharmacist, and in the hobo by the train. In King’s mind, Pennywise isn’t a singular figure. He’s the embodiment of the concept of evil. Where IT lands, even when he sleeps, ill will, distrust, anger, wrath, greed, and abuse seep out into every stream and boulevard in Derry, Maine. Evil is like a virus, spreading from neighbor to neighbor and to the neighbor’s son. In Derry, the townsfolk do the work for Pennywise. The dad molests the daughter. The brother ingores his sibling. The mom neglects the boy. The gangs beat up the heavy kid. The schoolmates tease the different one.
In this, seeds of terror are planted. Each child sees their demise in the face of things they most regret about their lives. Ben will always be “fat and lonely”. Bev is nothing more than a perverted daddy’s “little girl”. Richie has to make you laugh or you’ll laugh at his secret. Billy was the reason his little brother died. Eddie will never be a man. Mike doesn’t belong because he’s black. Stan believes there’s no safety and security in his religion, hard work and stable life.
Remember, Remember
Pennywise’s scare tactics in IT 2 go way beyond looking like a werewolf because you’re afraid of werewolves. Pennywise wants you to remember. He always lurks quietly in the shadows while Bill sees Georgie, his dead brother. He fills sinks with blood and appears as an old woman to a girl whose only shame is…not being a little girl anymore. Richie’s secret about his best friend Eddie manifests as a gigantic statue of a manly man chasing him openly in a park. Ben’s childhood underground playhouse becomes his grave as Pennywise stands over him reminding him, “You’ll die alone.”
The dancing clown wants us to remember. As does anxiety and depression. In religion the word devil means “one who casts aside” and satan means “accuser”. Pennywise is no less an accuser and one who throws away human beings like trash.
That’s what evil does. It degrades us, disposes of us and then teaches us to remember it until it destroys us.
Mike was JUST a librarian
All the kids grow up to be “successful”. An architect, writer, comedian, fashion designer, risk assessor (I guess that’s cool), partner in an accounting firm.
All but one. Mike stayed in Derry and became the librarian. But when you look at the other kids, they fought the fear by feeding fear rather than by addressing it. Bev went to PROVE she was a woman by leading the fashion world, and along the way she got a wife beater for a husband. Ben kept building all the way into the sky where he lived alone. Bill wrote stories, but like with George, couldn’t find a good ending. Richie kept making people laugh. Stan’s structured outlook got him to the tip top of the accounting world.
Mike stayed in Derry. What was his terror? Being black and being told, “You don’t belong here, boy.” Well, Mike stayed here for 27 years. He didn’t run, didn’t cover it with faux celebrity and didn’t enter a self-fulfilling prophecy like Bev, finding himself over and over in more places he wasn’t accepted. Mike just stayed put, and eventually, the reminders were smaller than the realities. He’s not the 12 year old who doesn’t really know if he belongs.
IT has no power here
Mike’s story has something missing in both movies. Although he sees IT three times, it’s always in the distance and the clown never speaks to him. Mike already conquered his condemnation, so Pennywise has no way to get to him. That’s why he sends Henry Bowers to kill him. Mike has overcome, and he’s calling the Loser’s Club back to town to do the only thing that IT can’t combat.
He’s calling them back into community, loving community, where they are accepted, not accused, and they are unified, not cast aside.
Apparently, unity and love casts out fear.
