Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 02:25:08 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Stephen King's IT/IT Remake

Started by Goldentony, August 28, 2012, 09:48:54 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Mister Six

Late to the party, as ever. Seemed to be basically a kids' adventure movie with a surprising amount of blood and dismembered bodies than a horror flick. I arrived a bit late, during the breakneck WOO WOO IT'S A HEADLESS CHILD WOOO A SPOOKY PAINTING WOO HANDS BEHIND A DOOR bit but thankfully it slowed down a bit after that. Still felt weirdly both over-stuffed and rather lacking though.

Don't get the CGI complaints - I thought they were superb. The problem wasn't that they were shit CGI, it's that they were CGI at all, with that plasticky unreal sheen. The leper should have been fucking disgusting; my wife thought he was supposed to be a zombie pirate like in Pirates of the Caribbean. More shadows, CGI-augmented prosthetics, leaving something to the imagination would have all made it scarier - but maybe that was deliberate to avoid pushing the rating too high.

As everyone else said the kids were fantastic - though I'd say the kid playing Eddie was the highlight, even moreso than  Bev.

Needed to be a bit less Goosebumps, a bit more The Shining. Ah well. Next time, maybe.

Repeater

I can't get over how ugly the iconography and IT itself looked. Not disturbingly ugly, just aesthetically awful.

Icehaven

I liked it, but then I've not read the book or seen the original film or the series, I'm not really a horror fan, I've never read any Stephen King and I really liked Stranger Things. There were a few bits as someone said above that I just had to presume would make more sense to people familiar with the book and maybe the series, a few things Pennywise said, the floating kids thing, why is it every 27 years etc.
Maybe it's just because we were in a smallish screen but did anyone else think it was really bloody LOUD too? It's not me, I play in a metal band ffs, but there were moments (usually whooshing pre-jump scene music) where it was almost unbearable. My boyfriend isn't too keen on loud noise at the best of times and it was the first thing he mentioned when we left.

Shay Chaise

It was so so fucking loud. I have tinnitus/hyperacusis (which I manage pretty well, don't stress about it) and I had my fingers in my ears for the best part of two hours because it was physically unbearable for me. I'm reluctant to go and see Blade Runner for the same reason, I heard it's deafening.

colacentral

Quote from: icehaven on October 15, 2017, 01:55:37 PM
I liked it, but then I've not read the book or seen the original film or the series, I'm not really a horror fan, I've never read any Stephen King and I really liked Stranger Things. There were a few bits as someone said above that I just had to presume would make more sense to people familiar with the book and maybe the series, a few things Pennywise said, the floating kids thing, why is it every 27 years etc.
Maybe it's just because we were in a smallish screen but did anyone else think it was really bloody LOUD too? It's not me, I play in a metal band ffs, but there were moments (usually whooshing pre-jump scene music) where it was almost unbearable. My boyfriend isn't too keen on loud noise at the best of times and it was the first thing he mentioned when we left.

The floating kids thing is nonsense original to the movie. In the book he says it meaning they're dead - they float. He's not showing off about a spell he does. That part really annoyed me.

Icehaven

Quote from: colacentral on October 15, 2017, 08:12:13 PM
The floating kids thing is nonsense original to the movie. In the book he says it meaning they're dead - they float. He's not showing off about a spell he does. That part really annoyed me.

I see. It made me think of Ulysses 31. And at first I thought they were going to be alive when they floated back down, and that that would be a bit rubbish, but then they weren't.

Mister Six

Quote from: colacentral on October 15, 2017, 08:12:13 PM
The floating kids thing is nonsense original to the movie. In the book he says it meaning they're dead - they float. He's not showing off about a spell he does. That part really annoyed me.

I didn't mind the idea, but the execution was weird. Lots of vague long shots of the corpses, but no detail, so the horror (I assume that was the intention) of the moment is lost. It's especially baffling that they didn't feature that in the plot at all - they mention the bodies falling but you only see one drifting down in the background. They didn't even have a bit where they find Georgie's corpse, which you'd think would be the logical conclusion.

I strongly suspect they added those bits in reshoots, after test screenings to morons led to lots of people not getting that the corpses were supposed to be floating in water like the fucking severed heads we saw earlier.

Mister Six

Oh another couple of things that bothered me - was anyone else a bit irked by the changes to Bev and Mike's stories? Turning the girl into a damsel in distress and taking away the black kid's main character trait (he's supposed to be the amateur historian) would have been questionable back in 1981 - now, in this idea of identity politics and positive depictions it's outright bizarre. Especially because Mike's interest in the town's history is rooted in the racism his family has faced, making it central to his own racial identity.

I mean, from an act three "reuniting and galvanising the team" point of view Bev's change makes sense at least.

But Mike's renders him completely irrelevant, and the total fucking lack of balls when it came to depicting racism means Henry's prejudice appears almost out of nowhere seconds before his death, leaving no sense of catharsis over Mike's retaliation.

They could easily have left Mike as the historian, as Ben's romance was enough of a subplot to make him stand out (or would have been, if they'd paid that off in any remotely satisfying way at the end). But they didnt. Because... He's black?

Icehaven

Were the floating bodies supposed to be something else only the kids could see? Because it seemed a bit odd, in a town where loads of kids were going missing, and one was even all but seen being dragged into a storm drain, that the extensive sewer system that emptied into a river wouldn't have been searched.

Mister Six

Also odd that there's not even a perfunctory line of dialogue to explain whether the bodies were found or who was blamed. In the books the town blames it all on Henry. In this I guess we're supposed to assume that they left all the bodies - including Georgie's - to moulder in the sewer?

Another suggestion that the floating bodies weren't in the original cut, I reckon. Easier to explain nobody being able to find those heads somewhere deep in the labyrinth than expecting nobody to spot 20+ corpses oiled up next to a load of junk, apparently open to the sky (?).

Glebe

Oh yeah, saw this again last week. Yes, it has it's flaws, but heck, once again I enjoyed the atmos and general shenanigans. I'd probably be more critical if I'd read the book (which I indeed intend to do at some point).