#during the video eddie points to a lamp and says this is a lamp we got from the flea market!

[tawneybel]

Because I mentioned I was going to eventually get rid of my old shower curtain, my mom surprised me and got me an Edward Gorey one. Gashlycrumb Tinies! 

One of the recent ghost books on ghost I read mostly just (intentionally or not) taught me how to fake spooky sh*t at seances but in the entry on mirrors it mentioned looking into one at night was considered bad luck. But that’s kind of hard to avoid. I already knew using candlelight to look into a mirror is considered to be unlucky but I think a cellphone’s flashlight doesn’t count. Anyway, going to the bathroom at night is going to be spookier. :D 

Life’s been kind of hectic lately, mostly due to things outside of my control. I want to get a new job this summer. And fix my sleeping schedule. I’ve been getting stress dreams again for the first time in a while. I don’t count a bad dream as a nightmare unless I wake up terrified but it still sucks. Going to ask my doctor if melatonin is a good idea.  

My dog (see above) had a nasty cough after getting knocked out for some dental surgery, which is supposed to be normal, but it lasted for a while so we took her to the vet. And it turns out that the reason she was scratching on my door every night to be let outside was because of a UTI. She’s doing better now. 

Mm, there’s a lot more things to talk about but I’ll save that for another post. 

The Dark Knight: There was a scene where a bunch of men got their uniforms stolen and they were tied up and g*gged. I watched the trilogy out of order. To be honest, I get kind of bored watching these but the villains are cool. Bane’s darling but now that I’ve seen Venom I prefer Eddie Brock. Jonathan Crane is kind of cute, too. 

Now I finally get why people like the Joker so much. He gives not a single f*ck. So many things could go wrong at any moment during his plans, he relies so much on luck, but he has so much confidence. I feel like if tried to slide down a hill of money I would hurt myself. The best scene was the Joker walking quickly out and away from the hospital. Also, the bank heist in the beginning. 

Crimson Peak started to get good when Edith and Lucille were having the butterfly discussion and ended up being better paced than I thought it would be. But after Carter got his head smashed in, I’m not sure why Edith would go with Thomas after that. 

Gothic horror is actually fun to learn about in school because the genre’s progenitors would probably be into yandere and monster f*cking. It’s like... In the first art history class I took, we were looking at Renaissance paintings and there was a fair amount of stuff with a de*th and the maiden motif. The modern equivalent would be a lot of metal album covers.

Brain Damage: I was looking for infestation movies and I’m so glad I stumbled upon this. Not because it’s particularly good but ‘cause the MC is super cute. Basically the talking leechy thing pumps Brian full of an addictive fluid through the the back of his neck and they have a faux symbiotic relationship where Aylmer gorily eats other people’s brains.

There was a scene where Brian’s brother answers the phone lying on his stomach in his und*rwear. Followed by a scene where Brian takes his pants off and you see his t*sh. Also a very brief M/F/M thr*some dream that gets gruesome real quick. 

The Stuff: If you’re into The Blob, you’ll probably like this. The mode of killing is a bit different. Stuff’s alive and controls people from the inside. 

A Cure for Wellness: Shout out to his movie for showing n*ked/scantily clad old people without getting weird about it. Within the first half hour I was surprised when it didn’t do well at the box office. The visuals draw you in but it was probably too long and could have been better. I wasn’t expecting to it get kind of fantastical. It’s got existentialism, surrealism, mystery... Uhhhh... I’m not sure whether to classify it as fantasy or sci fi. 

Venom: Hits so many k*nks. Dan’s cute, Anne has good taste in men. Carlton Drake gets symbioted. Actually, I’m not sure if he or Eddie is sexier. The first guy to get possessed in the Eminem video is also cute. Best line is Venom saying, “Look at her. She has no idea we are going to get her back.” The Rorschach-like ending credits were cool. 

Sleepaway Camp: Before I watched this, I already knew the ending. Sort of. To be honest, I expected “Angela” to be an offensive portrayal of a trans woman but the situation was more like David Reimer, minus g*nital m*tilation. The ending itself... Aunt Martha may not have gone on a murder spree but she’s the scariest person in the film. Otherwise I wouldn’t have said there’s anything terribly special about this film. Based on the synopsis of the sequel, I’m probably not going to watch the rest of the franchise. 

Hell Fest: Pretty typical modern slasher but the atmosphere is great. It was also funny. I’m just gonna use bullet points for this.

“You know what? He deserves at least some dignity after death.” “Let’s give him a b*ner.” 

When asked if he mentioned something about having a f*tish for p*ddles, Gavin answers, “I have never said that in my entire life.”

Why did Asher get hotter while he was struggling and getting stabbed in the eyeball?

It took me a minute to recognize Tony Todd. Sad. 

Men in Black II: At no point in the film did Serleena, who is capable of transformation and has tentacles, transform into a male und*rwear model. :’( 

Fullmetal Alchemist: (The manga.) A military fantasy that raises some good questions about ethics. And dat solar aesthetic. The chimera designs were so cool. Envy is a cruel, skimpily dressed shapeshifter with a grotesque “true form” and Lin gets willingly possessed by Greed. So that’s right up my alley. 

Break My Heart 1,000 Times: Good time to read this. It takes place in February. Read this because I Still See You has Richard Harmon. The book started off decently but I didn’t like the protagonist’s behavior near the end of part three. And there’s some sexism. Like hysterically slapping her love interest and blaming herself for not having any weapons in her room because she’s a girl. Seriously, I keep a bigass King James Bible on my nightstand. If anyone breaks in, they’re getting brained by the Good Book. Or a lamp. Or the nightstand itself. But hopefully my dog would maul an intruder first. 

Christine: Wasn’t really into it but you might be if you’re into corruption, e.g. a nerdy guy becoming slightly more physically appealing jerk*ss. 

The 100: I got teary-eyed when Clarke and Lexa were saying goodbye and then the latter accidentally gets short. Poor Murphy can’t catch a break, as usual. Started season four the other day. 

Hostel: DUMB REASON TO GO “OUT OF BOUNDS”, FELLAS.

Going into this, I thought I’d like Jay Hernandez’s character the most but then I found the other guys cuter until the end then I really liked Paxton. Weirdly enough, I found Alexei cute. There’s decent whump but I’m not into v*mit. 

I think I saw an ad with the guy who tortured Paxton when I was in elementary school but I mistook it for something from one of the Saw movies. This was obviously before I had any interest in watching these kinds of movies. XD  

Songs of the Day: I’ve been listening to a lot of Dead inside the Chrysalis/Dedderz lately... I’m crushing on Manek Deboto. He should be the one wearing a th*ng in the She’s So Rad music vid! If they ever do  “He’s So Rad” they should include Elm Street’s Jesse Walsh and Brian from Brain Damage...

[derryhawkins]

Growing Fame (3/??)

summary: A modern AU where the losers are semi-famous for different things, and when they all run into each other at a certain event, all of their fans go bat-shit crazy – wanting the seven to spend more time together. What they didn’t expect even more than that, though, was a well-known and mean journalist to write bad reviews on them all. Their growing fame could soon shrink, they quickly realized. warnings: mention of slut shaming and drinking/being drunk; swearing pairings: benverly; bichie; steddie; mike/oc a/n: There’s less Richie and Mike in this part but I make it up with a shitty article made by a shitty person at the end, and a small amount of stan x eddie (steddie) at the beginning.

CH 1 | CH 2 | CH 3 | CH 4 coming soon

Speculations and False Accusations

There weren’t many things about his roommates that surprised Stan. The two were simple to read and pretty much easy going. Even Mike, Ben, and Beverly didn’t surprise him much when he first met them. Who did surprise Stanley, though, was Richie Tozier; the tall male was pretty much seen as a loose canon in Stan’s eyes. He was nice, though. Still made the stupid ‘your mom’ jokes and dick jokes as if he was still a high schooler, but he was nice.

So imagine Stanley’s shock when he saw a few fans commenting on the vlog he posted the night before, that Richie Tozier could be the boy Bill Denbrough dated for a month in high school. Bill had shared that story before, about how he first realized he was bisexual during a high school hang out and drunkenly making out with some guy. He had dated the same guy for about a month before calling it off; but the boy’s name remained anonymous to the fans, and even Stan and Eddie.

The dirty blond male quickly started reading more and more of the comments speculating that Richie and Bill had dated. The fans were just simply backing it up by saying they were extremely close. Stan wanted to brush it off because the two were best friends, of course they were extremely close. But there was just something about them both when they reunited that gave Stan the feeling that the fans weren’t being crazy this time around. He rubbed at his bottom lip as he thought about the situation.

“Eddie, where’s the peanut butter?!” Bill shouted from the kitchen.

“Middle shelf!” Eddie yelled back from his room.

Stan uncrossed his legs as he got into a better sitting position on his bed. His door was wide open, so he could hear the shouts pretty clearly. He locked his phone as he came up with a little thought and moved off of his bed, quickly making his way out of his room and to Eddie’s. He knocked on the doorframe as he stepped into the room. Eddie looked up from a school text book and to Stan. A smile came over his features, cheeks tinting pink the slightest bit.

“What’s up Stan?” Eddie said.

He looked behind him for a moment, and then shut the bedroom door. He walked to Eddie’s bed and sat down. “What do you think about Richie?” Stan asked.

Eddie looked shocked by the question at first but soon gave a shrug. “He’s okay. Not as bad as I thought he would be, actually,” he replied. “Why?” He paused and smirked. “Does someone have a crush?”

“Ew! No, Eddie, jeez,” Stan frowned and shook his head quickly. “He’s not my type.” He hoped that Eddie didn’t notice his cheeks turning pink at saying the last part.

The smaller boy’s eyes widened slightly. “Oh, g- uh, then why are you asking about him?”

“Do you think he could be the guy Bill dated for a month?”

Eddie scoffed. He started to laugh, too, but he slowly stopped as he saw that Stan was completely serious. “Oh… I guess, I mean, it’s possible, maybe. They were a bit touchy the other day.”

Stan slowly nodded. He recalled a moment when they were all standing around at some point at comic con. Richie, with Georgie on his shoulders, and Bill stood side by side with barely any room between them both. Stanley had just brushed it off, pegging it as Bill wanting to be close in case Georgie fell off of Richie. But the dark haired boy had a tight hold on the young kid.

“We should just ask Bill-.”

“Eddie, no, that’s stupid. He would’ve said something by if he wanted to tell us.”

“Well, we can’t ask Richie, he’ll be way too suspicious.”

The two young males sat in silence for a few moments, thinking about the speculation that Richie and Bill dated. Suddenly, Eddie let out an “ah-ha” and picked up his phone from beside the lamp on his bedside table. Stan stared in confusion for a moment before leaning over to watch as Eddie scrolled through his contacts, stopping at a certain redhead’s name.

Beverly Marsh was on yet another date. This time, though, it wasn’t the girl that canceled on her and stood her up but rather a guy who reminded her too much of Richie - a complete turn off because the Tozier boy was basically her brother. But the guy wasn’t as nearly as entertaining as Richie; rather boring and kept on going on and on about his brand new red mustang that she just has to check out later tonight. The guy was more than rich, Beverly could tell just by his clothes, and despite having Richie’s personality, it was masked by a snobbish attitude and boasting about how much money he had at such a young age.

She honestly hoped that Richie would never become a snob. His fame was increasing, after all, and with fame came lots of money.

The twenty one year old took a sip of the wine that her date ordered for them both at the beginning, and glanced around the fancy restaurant. She had used the money she had acquired from being a YouTuber to buy a fancy, expensive dress. Still, though, she felt out of place. Maybe it was because her hair wasn’t as long as other girl’s; it was only at her shoulders right now. Maybe it was because the splotches of freckles littering her skin; all the other girls had smooth, unmarked skin. Maybe it was because she simply didn’t belong in such a fancy place.

Suddenly, a sharp ringing started in her purse and Beverly set her wine glass down and grabbed her purse. She cursed under her breath at forgetting to turn the sound off at the beginning of the date, and grabbed it and pressed a button to turn the sound off. Beverly frowned at seeing Eddie Kaspbrak’s name across the screen. She glanced up at her date.

“So sorry, I usually turn my phone off, but my mother is in the hospital and I need to take this,” Beverly rushed out her on the spot lie.

The man looked sympathetic. He said, “Oh, no, go and answer it, Beverly. I understand.”

Beverly gave a thankful smile before standing up and grabbed her purse and phone as she got up. “I’ll just be in the bathroom,” she said before clicking on the answer button. She waited until she was far enough away to answer, “Hi, Eddie, what’s up?”

“Beverly, thank God, we thought you wouldn’t answer,” came the guy’s reply.

“Hi, Bev!” A voice she recognized as Stan Uris’ shouted.

“Hi, Stan,” she greeted and stepped into the bathroom. “Thank you for calling, by the way, you’re interrupting my boring ass date.”

“Damn, you’re welcome,” Stan said.

“Boring dates are not fun,” Eddie sighed. “Anyway, we need to ask you a question involving you’re annoying friend.”

“Is he single? Yes.”

“No! Sheesh, Bev, I don’t like him like that.”

“Did Richie ever date a guy in high school but broke up with him about a month later?” Stan asked.

Beverly raised an eyebrow and leaned against the wall by one of the sinks. Her nose wrinkled some at seeing the fancy soap name on the bottle; she wasn’t able to pronounce it. But she shoved that thought away as she focused on Stan’s question. “Oddly specific,” she muttered.

“Yeah, well…” He trailed off.

“Um,” Beverly sighed and chewed on her bottom lip as she thought back to all the dating stories she has heard from Richie Tozier.

It didn’t take long for her to remember a time where they were both a bit tipsy and Richie was muttering on about how he regretted one of his break ups in high school. He never said who, or whether it was a boy or girl. It confused her, too, because he’s only told her two full stories of dating in high school. One awkward freshman girlfriend, and one senior boyfriend that dumped in right before graduation. Literally, right before everyone was seated to get their diplomas. Beverly doubted he regretted those two.

“Well, he told me once when he was tipsy that he regretted a break up in high school. I don’t know who, though, guys, sorry. I need to ask him about it, actually,” she finally said. “Why do you want to know anyway?”

Stan said, “Bill dated a guy for about a month but he’s never told us who. I was on YouTube looking at the comments on the vlog I put up of us at comic con and fans were speculating that Richie’s that guy.” 

“You and Richie seem pretty close so we were wondering if he told you anything,” Eddie added.

“That’s all I know, guys, sorry. Plus I thought Rich kinda was flirting with you, Eddie.”

A gagging noise and Stan’s laughter was quickly heard, making her smile as Beverly looked at her nails. She then thought of the day they went to comic con. She did notice that Richie and Bill were oddly close, but didn’t think anything of it. Beverly narrowed her eyes at recalling that Richie brings up Bill any time he can. That he made sure to watch all of his videos and support him the best he could with living apart.

“Gross, Bev,” Eddie grumbled and made the redhead snap back to reality.

“Yeah, yeah, you like someone else with curly hair, I know,” Beverly snickered.

“What,” was Stan’s even yet shocked voice while Eddie was trying to sputter out an answer.

“Kind of not kidding, but anyway, I best be going so my date doesn’t get suspicious. I’ll question Richie about it some and see if I come up with anything, okay? Talk to you losers later!”

After getting a farewell and a good luck from both boys, Beverly hung up and used the bathroom. She washed her hands and then walked back out to finish the boring date. Beverly plastered a smile on her face as she sat back down and got ready to tell a spur of lies about her sickly mother in the hospital. Because, of course, her date just had to question her.

Ben sat at his desk in his apartment in front of his computer, going through random website platforms to get caught up on whatever the hell as going on in the world and what dramatic thing the Kardashians did now. Harry Styles’ album played on his spotify to fill up the emptiness of his small home, his black lab chewing on a bone a couple feet away. Once in a while, Ben would look over and simply watch his dog for a few seconds before having his eyes glued to the computer screen once again.

The muscular male was humming along to “Meet Me In the Hallway” as he scrolled through his slightly abandoned FaceBook page. He only got on there to like posts his family put up and share a few news about his favorite singers and bands. Other than that, Ben never got on the Book of Faces - as his grandmother had called it a few months ago. But he stopped short at seeing a title of one of the articles popping up on his feed.

SEVEN HOOLIGANS RUIN COMIC CON

Ben eyes narrowed slightly. He had a sneaking suspicion on what it was about. Still, though, he clinked the link and waited for it to load. When it was done loading, he looked at the author’s name. Penny Wise. What the hell kind of name is that, he asked himself. He just shook his head and went on reading about the ‘hooligans’ at comic con.

“There is no doubt in my mind that a good portion of the population know of YouTubers and their fame that basically none of them should have. Not many of them are good influences on the children of today’s world and that is clearly shown when seven hooligans were seen at comic con causing a scene the entire time they were there.

“The three guys of BES Vids (Bill Denbrough, Eddie Kaspbrak, and Stan Uris), famous for their obnoxious jokes, were with make up and FX artist Beverly Marsh; YouTube sensation who shouldn’t be singing in the first place, Mike Hanlon; historically inaccurate Ben Hanscom-.”

“Rude,” Ben muttered, “And I’m very accurate, asshole, and my best friend is amazing at singing.”

“-and last but not least, the lead singer of The Records, Richie Tozier, who is the most terrible influence of them all.

“These seven 20 to 21 year olds constantly made ruckus at comic con. Some by-standers claim they had snuck in alcohol to the convention, and were drunk. Not only that, but they had a child with them, obviously someone’s little brother. They had even lost the kid at one point. Seven adults lost a child. How does that happen?–.”

Ben groaned and stopped reading there, only skimming the rest of the article and catching other false and ridiculous claims. The guy said that they had been asked to leave at one point and they all refused; it was bullshit. People actually encouraged their weird antics. They were never drunk. They found Georgie less than a minute later after they had lost the kid. Multiple fans came up and asked for pictures.

Then the guy called Beverly a slut for being with all boys and claimed that Richie was extremely high, too, and that he made out with a few fans. Plus even more fake truths. The article was complete bullshit. But by the number of shares and comments, a lot of people actually believed the bullshit. He chewed on the inside of his cheek and quickly sent the link to Mike on FaceBook messenger. The response wasn’t too quick, maybe five minutes later.

Mike Hanlon: WHAT THE FUCK, THAT’S ALL BULLSHIT

Ben Hanscom: Exactly why I shared it. The others need to know this is out there; it’s getting more popular by the minute, Mike.

Mike Hanlon: Making a gc with their numbers + ours. Maybe our hang out will come sooner than we thought. We need to talk about this together.

Ben Hanscom: Damn I know. Fuck this shit, man

Mike Hanlon: YEAH YOU ARE VERY HISTORICALLY ACCURATE IN YOUR VIDEOS, FUCK THIS MAN, FUCK ANY ONE WHO AGREES WITH HIM, I’M P I S S E D NO ONE TALKS ABOUT MY BFF LIKE THAT

Ben Hanscom: Mike I love you but send the link to the others already so we can all yell about this together.

Mike Hanlon: Right, yeah, on it.

TAG LIST: @cupcakeatl @howellhxlic @anniewdoodles @kitaruhakiashi @thesubtextmachine @magickandmoons @allison0609

[cripplinganxietyflix]

I saw IT.

The time has finally arrived. IT was released to theaters last Friday and so far, it’s broken a lot of records in a time when we’re all talking about a disastrous summer season for theaters (down 7% from the summer of 2016), and pretty piss-poor theater attendance in general. The $35 million dollar film made over $50 million in its first day in theaters and has generated $123 million in its opening weekend. IT can now lay claim to both the largest-ever opening for a horror film and the largest-ever opening for a film released in September. That’s a pretty big deal, but even before viewing the film, I wasn’t surprised by the success. The reputation the IT miniseries has generated over 27 years and the cultural phenomenon it sparked, in my mind, has played the largest role in selling $123 million in tickets. It isn’t the objective quality of the film driving this, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

In terms of millennials and based on my own anecdotal observation, the IT miniseries serves as a lot of people under 30’s first horror movie experience. Usually dad rented the two VHS tapes from Blockbuster because hey, it was on TV, it can’t be too bad. Or someone tuned in on a sick day in elementary school during a re-run. A lot of people in their early 30s and late 20s saw IT between the ages of six and ten, in the prime age for childhood post-traumatic horror movie stress. I would argue that the original IT has claimed the largest number of childhoods out of all horror films, maybe more than The Exorcist, Dawn of the Dead, or The Shining.

Speaking of which, I’m not in the demographic of adults that were scarred by IT as a child. I can’t precisely recall when I first watched it, but I was between 10 and 12 and by then I’d already had my shit wrecked watching The Omen on AMC home alone on a sick day when I was 8. To this day, the moments in the miniseries that spooked me were a few instances of weird practical effects, like the shower scene with the clown parting his way through a drain, but other than that, I came out of it mostly bored. The spider ending was pretty weak even for someone with arachnophobia. While Tim Curry did his best with an absurd premise and he did deliver a memorable performance, it’s hard for me to take the whole thing seriously. It’s a flamboyant, quipping clown, for fuck’s sake. On that note, I’ve never really understood the appeal of Stephen King, to be really frank. You can argue the absolute best adaptation of his work is Kubrick’s The Shining, and King himself has come out and said he dislikes it because of the liberties Kubrick took to make it a watchable, serious film. You can say what you want about that, but I look at that and compare it to King’s work on and praise for the 1997 Mick Garris miniseries adaptation for The Shining, and it’s hard for me to take him seriously. I respect his work ethic, but I don’t find the work itself appealing or compelling most of the time.

It takes some skill to make a cohesive film about an angry, child-murdering, supernatural clown that also can take the form of someone’s worst fear. The miniseries tried, and I think it was a mixed bag. The first half is pretty good and above average from what I would have expected for a TV special in the early 1990s, but the second half is quite disappointing. There are some good scares and quite a bit of effort made in terms of practical SFX, but it definitely suffered from the campy atmosphere and bad acting from the adults. The writing, particularly in part two, was kind of weak. The script wasn’t brilliant, and sometimes it was downright awful. The whole product is pretty cheesy and really didn’t age well. I won’t comment on the book because I read a bit of it in middle school and disliked it enough to put it down, and also because I don’t want to talk about the underage gangbang. FYI really refine your fucking Google search on that one if you’re curious. 

Coming out of the newest incarnation of IT, I think it was about what I expected. The closest comparison I can make is something like The Conjuring- not brilliant, certainly above the average wide-release horror film, but far too reliant on jump scares and sudden noises. And of course, plenty of CG effects to take you right out of the moment.

That’s the first thing I want to talk about with IT. The CG is my biggest complaint. Maybe a couple of years ago I would have said that CG is a foregone conclusion to have a successful, major horror movie, but after Get Out made $252.4 million dollars earlier this year on a $4.5 million budget without any major computer effects, I no longer think that’s a valid excuse. Sure, IT is much more of a spectacle film, but that makes me feel even more disappointed in the pervasive use of CG. A few times, I suppose it was justified, but it largely cheapened the film. There are many sequences with Pennywise rushing the screen that look awful, even laughable in some cases. The woman in the painting was another good example of bad CG being overused. We already know that minimal CG used to augment or distort faces can be great for horror, and a very relevant example I can think of is the very slight facial distortions used for the vampires in the film 30 Days of Night. Special effects were used to slightly narrow faces, to tilt eyes a few degrees; and the effect is a very creepy, almost uncanny valley effect that benefited that particular film greatly. I think something as subtle as skewing a woman’s face would have been more effective than what we saw in IT, which looked like a low-end video game monster. But that brings me to my next point.

This movie has zero subtlety. Yes, a movie about a pun-making killer clown can’t be expected to be a subtle film; that’s not what I’m getting at. Subtlety is a really important aspect of making something scary. IT fell victim to the same plague that most other horror films can’t seem to fight off, and that’s the total lack of subtlety in the scares. I feel like I saw Pennywise at least every five minutes, if not more, and it very much diminished his presence. Instead of being selective when showing him to maximize the dread and tension when he is visible, the movie spends a good chunk of its time and budget showing him off. Even worse, they don’t often make it count. Whereas many of Tim Curry’s Pennywise appearances in the miniseries are very memorable and stand out well, there were 3 instances where they let Bill Skarsgård do his thing: once at the very beginning, once in the middle of the film when Bill, Richie and Eddie enter the wellhouse for the first time, and at the very end of the film when they vanquish him back into the well. I think that the vast majority of Pennywise’s appearances outside of those three were meaningless and only served to desensitize viewers to the scare he would otherwise be able to generate. It was like they crammed 4 hours worth of Pennywise appearances into half the time. I feel that the film offered Skarsgård very few opportunities to carve his own path and make his performance iconic and memorable, and that’s pretty unfortunate. I think he is more than capable of delivering a good performance without being smothered with a disorienting kaleidescope of bad and unnecessary CG. He shows up so often, and yet it felt like Skarsgård had so little time to make it count.

On the note of subtlety, we need to talk about jump scares, and what makes a good jump scare and what makes a bad one. Jump scares are not inherently bad in horror films, but they are often overused and they’re almost always sloppy. A really good example of a perfect, organic jump scare can be found in the first fifteen minutes of the film Suspiria. Don’t call me a snob, there’s a reason why it has its reputation. We see a frightened young woman standing near a large, dark window. The Goblin score is hammering away and giving you a bizarre anxiety about what is about to happen. She looks out the window into the darkness, like she’s certain something has to be hiding in it. And it makes sense, because minutes earlier she’s running for her life through the woods and you’re still wondering what she was fleeing from. She lifts a lamp to the window, and we look into the darkness, and a pair of yellow bulging eyes appear with a subtle invocation from the Goblin score. The music then quiets, the shot pulls away, and suddenly a hairy arm smashes through the glass and grabs her head. The movie has already spent several minutes generating tension between the images and the score, and when the jump scare happens there is no added audio effects to augment what is already there. We have the sound of breaking glass and the woman’s screaming to do that already. Often times everything a film needs to generate a jump scare is already present, but all too often, directors don’t make the effort to cultivate the atmosphere to precipitate an organic jump scare. The audience is constantly cued into expecting one due to the framing of the scene, and they add unnecessary effects like loud, sudden noises to make you jump anyway. It’s a huge cop out! You can actually see a real example of this right in the IT teaser, and they kept in the movie. I think it’s enough to see Pennywise’s glowing eyes appear in the darkness of the sewer as Georgie tries to retrieve his boat, but in the teasers, they’ve added a loud noise like you’re too stupid to know when to be scared. It’s so unneeded, and lazy, and it was all over the film. Every time something spooky was about to happen, you fully expected it, and they threw in a loud clattering noise to scare you so that they wouldn’t have to try harder to generate tension or anxiety or to truly take you by surprise. I fully expected this from a major studio horror film but was surprised by how heavily IT relied on this low hanging fruit.

The writing was pretty uneven, but when it was good it was great, and the comedic timing worked well. However, it seems like Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer’s lines had all the effort put into them, but everyone else was pretty unmemorable. If the other kids are great actors, it wasn’t always easy to see. There’s a moment when Mike says something along the lines of “Guess I really am just an outsider” as his excuse for leaving the group, and it was so out-of-place and dumb. I hated the scene with Beverly cutting her hair and saying “this is what you did!” Speaking of whom, Sophia Lillis was pretty terrible and often felt extremely ingenuine when delivering her lines. Most of the other kids were alright, but not great. My bar for great child performances in horror movies has been set by films like The Innocents and more recently The Witch, so maybe I’m asking too much. But I went into this movie hearing all this buzz about how the strongest part of the film is the kids, and I’m just not seeing it. Do not even get me started on Nicholas Hamilton, who played Henry the bully. I could not stop rolling my eyes.

If anything about IT impressed me, I respected its willingness to show child dismemberment and death. It certainly was surprising when it happened and I am always talking about how the last frontiers of horror are showing kids being murdered and child molestation, and this movie covered both of those things. Kudos for being daring, and kudos for doing an R-rated film horror film, especially when big studio horror always goes for a PG-13 to get that sweet, sweet middle-schooler and teenager money. I think that Bill Skarsgård tries very hard with the opportunities he’s afforded, and I appreciate that he tried to do something different than what Tim Curry did. I’m not sure if I liked the cutesy-ness incorporated into of some of that approach, but he tried, and it shows. Two of the child actors (mentioned above) were great and charming, and I really wish that the casting was more consistent. I like that it didn’t try to cram the adult storyline into the run time and as much as I’ve disliked this film, it’s probably a good idea to have a sequel for the rest.

But I think that’s it for what I enjoyed. Maybe I’m jaded and maybe I’ve watched too many horror films, but IT felt like a totally unnecessary venture. I think that most of the positive reviews are 1) reviewers that are used to seeing mostly garbage low-effort horror blockbusters and 2) people that are huge fans of the miniseries or book and were happy to see it get a facelift. That’s the only way I can explain the buzz to myself. I don’t recall being scared at any point other than being afraid I was going to see a 15-year-old’s character get raped by her pervy dad. I think if you’re a big IT or Stephen King fan, or you’re not a prolific horror movie consumer, you’ll probably have a fine time watching this film. If you’re a horror snob, or hold your horror to reasonable standards, there’s a good chance you’re gonna have a bad time. I’ve seen a lot of great, effective horror movies in the last couple of years, and literally all of them cost $2-5 million to make and had little or no CGI. I really wanted to enjoy this movie and I did get myself excited to see it, but having slept on it for a night I’m baffled by the positive reviews. I wish I had enjoyed it more. IT isn’t brave enough to do anything outside of an extremely conventional, predictable approach, and unfortunately for this viewer, slightly above average writing with expensive production quality does not make a great horror film.

★★ ½