Is Found Footage dead? For the uninitiated, it’s a sub-genre in which a film appears to be assembled from actual camera footage recovered from an event. More broadly speaking, I suppose you could slot it in as a type of fake documentary (mockumentary) as well. While its origins run deep (the ur example usually cited is the 1980 Italian schlock-fest Cannibal Holocaust), the genre didn’t hit the big time until The Blair Witch Project became a sensation around the turn of the century.

Since then, the sub-genre has waxed and waned a few times, at least in the mainstream, as low-budget contenders come and go, with the occasional revitalizing effort keeping the concept alive. The J.J. Abrams produced Cloverfield hit a solid 8 years after Blair Witch, but it was Paranormal Activity that really kept this approach on the radar. All through that time, though, Found Footage has remained a constant in the horror niche. The reasons of this are varied, but they aren’t going away. The unending march of technology, social media, and our compulsion to document everything we do goes a long way towards answering one of the frequently begged questions of the sub-genre: why the hell were they filming this crap? The approach can lend a sense of verisimilitude to an otherwise hoaky concept (though let’s be honest, that’s still easier said than done). It’s a low budget aesthetic that will continue to be a mainstay of horror cinema.

The approach doesn’t come without its challenges. The aforementioned issue of motivation still remains a key question (why would you keep filming!?) For the most part, you have to be willing to cut the filmmakers a little slack when it comes to this sort of thing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it emphatically does not. The handheld aesthetic, while imparting a sense of realism, is also easy to overdo. I can’t think of anyone who really likes shaky cam, even if you can occasionally justify its use. Funnily enough, I think a big part of the Paranormal Activity series’ success is its innovation of using a tripod through the majority of the films. Another thing this approach tends to rely on is improvised dialog, which often turns out abysmally. I think it was fine in the original Blair Witch Project (though I get that a lot of people hate it for that), but they walked a fine line in that movie, one that most found footage can’t pull off.

Found Footage may not be making current waves at the box office, but it continues to be common amongst indie horror offerings and is here to stay. For this installment of the Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon, I caught up with three lesser known examples of the sub-genre, so let’s dive in:

• Willow Creek (trailer)
• The Bay (trailer)
• The Last Broadcast (trailer)
• The Poughkeepsie Tapes – The FBI discovers hundreds of video tapes in an abandoned house in Poughkeepsie, NY. The tapes depict decades of a serial killer’s exploits, especially focusing on one victim. Last year, whilst revisiting The Blair Witch Project, I mentioned that it was odd that most found footage movies simply consisted of the footage itself and no context, no interviews with experts, etc… Well this movie is exactly what I was talking about. It’s a mock documentary that is roughly split evenly between the eponymous tapes and talking head interviews with investigators, experts, victims’ family members, etc… For the most part it’s an effective approach, and the film is genuinely unnerving.
  

  It does come off a bit disjointed, but that’s to be expected given the conceit and actually serves to reinforce the feeling that what we’re watching is real (I mean, it’s not, but still). Some of the individual episodes are very well done. At one point, the killer approaches the mother of one of his victims and tells her to “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help” and at first, the woman just politely responds, but then you see something dawning on her face and the killer runs away, giggling. Some of the stalking and torture sequences got under my skin as well. There’s one segment in which 9/11 plays a part that is surprising and effective. One bit with a victim that was recovered after years of being the killer’s slave is very disturbing and sticks with you. There’s no real jump scares or gore, just a general tone of dismay that serves the film well. There’s lots to like here, but some flaws drag it down a few pegs. The actual video footage is very poor quality. I realize this is supposed to be VHS from the 90s, so the quality isn’t going to be great, but I think they overdid the wavy VHS distortions. Also, every clip is preceded by an annoying audio buzzing click noise that is distracting. I get what they’re going for here, but it’s just weird. For one thing, the video is presented at 1.85:1 (just like the rest of the movie), while most video cameras of the era would be 4:3. Why do that, but keep the quality so crappy? Some of the acting in the interviews is a bit off as well, but nothing too jarring. Sometimes it feels like we’re being told to be scared than we’re actually seeing something scary, but on balance, the film works. It’s a genuinely unnerving film, even if it doesn’t feel particularly satisfying in the end. **1/2

• Paranormal Activity (trailer)
• Paranormal Pactivity (Robot Chicken)
• The Last Exorcism (trailer)
• Lake Mungo – A young woman disappears and her grief-stricken family begins to think she’s haunting their house. Another faux documentary comprised mostly of talking head interviews and various other recordings. The proportion is more focused on the interviews than the actual footage that was found, and since all of this has clearly happened in the past, there’s not much tension (and some of the footage turns out to be less reliable than originally thought, which also puts a damper on things). The video footage is mostly better here, though it’s still quite unclear at times (but at least that has to do with zooming in on an image rather than the whole thing being manipulated to look poor quality).
  

  Unfortunately, most of this doesn’t add up. The film is well made, but lacks a bit of focus on what it really wants to get at. It does a reasonable job exploring the grief the family is going through, but there’s a lot of tangents that open more questions than they answer. In fact, the titular Lake Mungo doesn’t even show up until pretty late in the movie, and while we do get a couple of interesting developments there, it still feels anticlimactic. The movie never really coalesces beyond the grief plot, despite trying for some supernatural angles (that can get mildly creepy at times, but are almost always undercut by some other development, with the notable exception of the ending which attempts something kinda weird). On the other hand, I suspect that this will stick with me more than originally thought. Only time will tell on that front though, for now I’ll just stick with this is a decent exploration of grief with some neat supernatural speculation. **1/2

• The Blair Witch Project (trailer)
• How the Blair Witch Project Should Have Ended (short)
• Troll Hunter (trailer)
• WNUF Halloween Special – Imagine discovering a long lost video tape of one night’s local TV station’s Halloween broadcast, complete with a full news program (with the anchors in costume and everything), commercials, and a “special” where a film crew enters the infamous Webber house, the site of a gruesome local legend. This is a fascinating format for a movie and a novel approach to the sub-genre. It captures the 80s-style local broadcast shockingly well. I doubt it’d really convince anyone it was real (too much of a focus on the local environs and businesses with no mention of anything else), but on the other hand, they did an astonishing job imitating the period and its tropes and excesses.
  

  A certain type of viewer will definitely appreciate this nostalgic tone; the types that go hunting for cheesy old commercials on YouTube will also get a kick out of it. Some of the news segments are great (the one with the dentist is pitch perfect), the commercials are dead on, and the trumped-up exploration of a supposed haunted house is a good idea. Unlike the previous two films, this one takes a more comedic tone. Local television personality Frank Stewart is fantastic and mostly hilarious, all while playing it straight. The husband and wife paranormal team and priest are a little less successful, but Stewart keeps this all on track, even as unexpected things start happening. There are, perhaps, a few too many commercial breaks, the video quality ain’t great (still better than The Poughkeepsie Tapes though), and the finale goes a bit off the rails, but everything fits together in the end. This is a unique, nostalgic take on the Found Footage genre and worth checking out. **1/2

Maybe I was being too hard on these movies, but I had a lot of fun with this weekend. These weren’t perfect, but they were certainly interesting… Up next is another book/film adaptation combo on Wednesday, followed by, hmmm, I don’t have a theme for next weekend yet (and frankly, I haven’t done a “no discernible theme” week in a while…)

The “Video Nasties” were a group of 72 horror movies that were banned in the UK for… reasons? There didn’t appear to be any real criteria for inclusion on the list, though it’s generally cited as just “Violent content” or some such thing. It partly had to do with loopholes in home video laws that let some of these movies sneak onto shelves without going through the UK’s normal censorship regime, but even then, it seems like a rather odd list. Odd, but certainly interesting from a horror historian’s point of view, as it’s a neat little time capsule of the era. The lurid titles (Killer Nun!) and tantalizing video covers that promised oh-so-much are a good encapsulation of what it was like to peruse the horror section of your local mom-and-pop video store in the 80s (not that I had a ton of experience at that, to be sure, but still). Ultimately, like a lot of censorship schemes, the films on the list ended up gaining an allure not otherwise earned by their actual quality (another example of the Streisand Effect). The movies on the list range from “Why would they ever ban that?” to “Dear Lord, why isn’t this still banned?” Or so I’m told, as I’ve only seen about 15 of the movies on the list. Let’s increment that number a few times, shall we?

• Thanksgiving (fake trailer)
• Driving Lessons – Halloween Deleted Scene (short)
• The Boogeyman (trailer)
• Nightmare (aka Nightmares in a Damaged Brain) – An escaped mental patient heads back to his childhood home as he struggles to recall the trauma that set off his murderous impulses. A sorta hybrid slasher/serial-killer film, it does drag significantly for most of the running time, but it has a decent, slasher-ish finale. It doesn’t really follow the slasher rules though. No real final girl (the protagonist is a little boy that no one likes), the killer actually murders a kid at one point (I mean, like, sub-ten-year-old kid, though at least it doesn’t really happen onscreen), he only puts on his mask in the finale, and so on. For all its tedium, there are some memorable bits. The kills are few and far between, but most earn the “Video Nasty” designation with their explicit gore. As a fan of fake movie computer setups, this movie has a phenomenal example. It’s got five monitors, four of which are just constantly displaying the same mugshot of our killer.
  

  The fifth is a computer screen that shows text in, like, 72 pt font (it only fits 5 lines per screen). The computer is basically an all-powerful AI too. At one point he’s reading a police report about a stolen car that mentions that the driver is presumed dead. Our policeman asks it “Why presumed dead?” and it proceeds to answer. It does all sorts of cross-referencing and even predicts where the killer is going (Florida!?). My other favorite bit was the scene in which the Mother’s boyfriend tries to comfort her by explaining the plot of Blow Up (then realizes that, no wait, this isn’t comforting at all). Overall, I don’t think these bits really make up for the bland plotting and pacing of the film. It’s interesting in some ways and maybe worth checking out for students of the genre, but that’s about it. *1/2 (Also of note, the Amazon Prime version of the movie is a craptacular pan-and-scan transfer that is awful – I could see this being a bit better if it were better presented).

• Hardly Working: Slasher (Short)
• How Scream Should Have Ended (short)
• Bay of Blood (trailer)
• Bloody Moon (aka Die Säge des Todes) – A guy with a deformed face kills someone at a party,

  but does his time at a mental hospital and is discharged in the care of his sister. They go back to her language school, where, naturally, a bunch of kids start disappearing/dying. This is another sorta slasher/giallo hybrid, though at least this one has a few twists and turns and a genuine whodunit component (it’s pretty obviously not the deformed face mental patient guy, even though he does a bunch of creepy stalker type stuff). The kills aren’t as creative or gory here and the pacing is still pretty languid, but it hits more slasher tropes and ends strong. Like with Nightmare, there are some really odd bits that are memorable. The costume party starts off with a killer wearing a Mickey Mouse mask (I have no idea how they got away with this).

  

  The one kill with the wetsaw is cool, though they perhaps drag it out too long (and it ends with the killer running down a witness with his car – but the witness was a little boy! I guess they don’t call these movies “Nasty” for nothing…) This was made in Italy and that does add some flavor to the slasher tropes, but it’s ultimately still not particularly accomplished. Interesting in some ways, but not really worth going out of your way to see. **

• Jack Chop (short)
• Evil Dead (trailer)
• The Toolbox Murders (trailer)
• Absurd (aka Monster Hunter, aka Horrible, aka Zombi 6, aka Anthropophagus 2, aka Rosso sangue) – This movie has at least six different titles. It’s directed by Joe D’Amato, but he uses a pseudonym here (Peter Newton). All in service of a pretty hacky Halloween ripoff. Supposedly a sequel, but one that seems to rely very little on its predecessor, this one is about a man given strange, X-Men-like healing factor in an experiment run by the Catholic Church. Naturally, the process instilled him with murderous rage, so he hacks his way through town until he sets his sights on one particular house, all while a cop and a priest try to track him down. I was kinda interested in this whole Church-led genetic experimentation program, but that bit is pretty much dropped after the first act, in favor of poorly paced stalking and kills. Some interesting stuff, but at this point, all these movies are starting to blend together. Like the above mentioned movies, there are some memorable bits, including a sequence where the killer holds a woman in an oven and bakes her face. It’s cross-cut with a young girl removing some bed restraints, but it goes on for, like, ten minutes. Insane.
  

  The very last shots are also pretty spectacular and ultimately made me like this more than anything else I watched this weekend. I’m pretty much spoiling it with the screenshot, but since no one reads this blog and since even those few that do will probably never watch this movie, I don’t feel bad about it. Not a particularly great film, but you could do worse. **

Phew, that was not a particularly enjoyable series of movies. I like a good, gory sleazefest as much as the next person, but these just didn’t weren’t doing it for me… Hopefully next week’s theme, Found Footage, will fare a little better. In the meantime, we might hit up some book/movie adaptations. After that, who knows? I don’t have a plan for the last week of the marathon yet…

Nazis have long been cinematic shorthand for evil (even before the U.S. entered WWII), and horror movies are a natural arena for their villainy (as are video games). Their known dabbling with the occult, while most likely sensationalized, also plays well into the hands of genre fiction. I’d say that this sort of thing is actually overplayed, but apparently Nazis are attempting a comeback these days, which is just bizarre. As a dedicated defender of free speech, it’s always a bit frustrating to see these numskulls abuse our freedoms, but at least we know they’re there and can counter them. Despite breathless media reports, I suspect their presence is still minuscule and they’re certainly as ridiculed as ever, but then, this is small comfort to folks who’ve been directly impacted. In the immortal words of Indiana Jones: “Nazis. I hate these guys.” So let’s take some time this Six Weeks of Halloween to enjoy watching Nazis (sometimes Nazi zombies, sure, but still) get slaughtered by the bushel.

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror III: Dial Z for Zombie
• White Zombies (Key and Peele)
• Outpost (trailer)
• Shock Waves – A sparsely populated pleasure cruise stumbles on a mysterious island and crashes into an old shipwreck. They seek refuge in a rundown island hotel, only to be attacked by water-logged Nazi zombies. Pretty basic stuff, and unfortunately, as a PG movie, we don’t even get any Fulci-esque eye-gouging gags or even decapitated zombie heads or any gore whatsoever, actually. This isn’t always a necessity, but gore is zombie bread-and-butter, so to see that eschewed here is disappointing, especially when there’s basically nothing to the plot. That said, this movie has at least some charm to coast on… The Nazi angle is nice. Both John Carradine and Peter Cushing show up, if only for a short period (their screen time probably maxed out at 10 minutes combined). The rest of the cast seems on board as well. Jack Davidson is entertainingly bitchy and Brooke Adams does a decent final girl impersonation. The visuals are well done and the Nazi zombies look fantastic.
  

  They were specially bred to be underwater soldiers, so they’ve got these fabulous goggles and the way they tend to fade into view or slowly rise out of the water (and slink back into the water) is effective. But only for, like, the first 30 times or so that we see it. After that it gets a little repetitive and it’s like, come on you dumb zombies, start pulling out people’s intestines or something. There’s some good underwater photography (a solid long-ish take follows one zombie as he walks along for a solid minute, and it’s a wide enough shot that it at least feels like they actually got some dude to hold his breath for a while). Still, the pace drags considerably throughout the movie, something most zombie movies resolve with frequent doses of gore. Look, I know this sort of begging for gore is unbecoming and doesn’t really speak well of me, but what I’m really after is pacing and fun. As already mentioned, this doesn’t need to come from gore, but you’ve got to do something. Ultimately, though, this is a story filled with bloodless kills (and not in a suspenseful, Hitchcockian way either) and not a whole lot of plot. Hell, we don’t even really get to see the Nazi zombies get slaughtered (a couple die, but in rather unspectacular fashion.) It could have been a lot worse, but it could have been oh so much more. **

• The Netherbeast of Berm-Tech Industries, Inc. (Short)
• Hitler Reacts to Wolfenstein 3D (short)
• Werewolf Women of the S.S. (fake trailer – extended edition)
• The Devil’s Rock – Two Kiwi commandos sent to destroy German gun emplacements find that our Nazi friends have summoned a demon. First off, kudos for a Nazi horror movie that doesn’t involve zombies! Of course, that doesn’t make the premise all that original; soldiers investigate enemy base and discover creepy occult stuff is a well worn sub-genre. Still, this has lots of things to recommend it. It quickly resolves into a chamber piece and does an admirable job maintaining suspicion across all three of the main players. I mean, yeah, the demon is obviously not to be trusted, and there is a clear hero, but the Nazi villain is surprisingly convincing at times and the film manages generate a modicum of sympathy even for him.
  

  I also found it amusing that the demon’s main argument is basically: “But he’s a Nazi!” Which, frankly, is pretty convincing. I mean sure, she butchered an entire garrison of soldiers… but they were Nazis. Even demons find them shitty. There’s some nice historical touches and some subtle references (the Nazi mentions how close Hitler’s forces got to the Ark of the Covenant as well as their near success in raising the Old Ones, references to Raiders of the Lost Ark and Hellboy, respectively). While clearly low budget, it still looks pretty good and is generally well appointed. Well worth checking out. ***

• A Story With Zombies (short story)
• Honest Zombie (Robot Chicken)
• Dead Snow (trailer)
• Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead – Nazi zombies remain on a rampage. After securing the Nazi gold that brought them back to life, it seems our Nazi zombie leader has taken up arms (literally!) and seeks to complete his mission to sack some nearby town. Opposing him is Martin (Vegar Hoel), lone survivor of the first movie, who recruits a trio of American zombie enthusiasts (the always great Martin Starr along with the plucky Jocelyn DeBoer and Ingrid Haas) and, well, a band of Russian zombies.
  

  The first movie took its time to get going and had some weird tonal issues, but this one just picks up the loopy pace from the end of the first movie and maintains it throughout. The goofiness is still out in full force and the tone is consistently comedic. Doctors inadvertently sew a zombie arm onto our protagonist, which then gives him mystical zombie powers. Oh, and the head zombie now has the ability to raise others from the dead. It’s silly, sure, but then again, this is a movie where zombies take someone’s intestines and use them to siphon gas from a bus to a tank. Oh yeah, the zombies have a tank now. It’s all in good fun if you’re willing to go with it, and there’s lots of decent gore effects and creative kills, which would probably make this a great crowd-pleaser (which is a shame, because I’m pretty sure this didn’t get much of a release here)… A solid little zombie film,

  well worth checking out. **1/2

That about wraps up this week in hating Nazis. Coming soon: Video Nasties! Found Footage! And moar! Stay tuned.

The Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon continues with another week of obscure scream queens, this time focusing on French acress Isabelle Adjani. Last week, we looked at a few of Erika Blanc’s films, which are distinctly more lurid and trashy than Adjani, who has more of a reputation for staid, artistic work. You’ll see below that she’s also worked with some more popular art house directors, like Werner Herzog, Roman Polanski, and Andrzej Żuławski. While successful in Europe, she never really managed to crossover into the U.S. filmmaking scene, hence my labeling as “obscure”. Of course, last week’s reservations about the term “scream queen” apply doubly here, as Adjani is clearly trying for more, despite her work in genre films. Still, she makes an impression, as we’re about to find out:

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror IV: Bart Simpson’s Dracula
• What We Do In The Shadows (trailer)
• Is that a whip? (Robot Chicken)
• Nosferatu the Vampyre – Werner Herzog’s retelling of the Dracula story, this obviously resembles previous incarnations (most obviously F.W. Murnau’s silent film), but Herzog’s approach puts enough of a twist on the story that this is certainly a worthy successor. Since Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula had entered the public domain, Herzog was able to use real character names and combine that with some of Murnau’s aesthetic. Despite a similar shape that hits most of the same beats, Herzog’s film manages many changes. Max Schreck’s Count Orlok was a simple, but terrifying monster (a solid choice given the limitations of silent film). Here, Klaus Kinski plays Dracula with more humanity. Still a monster, to be sure, but sad, tired, and envious of mortality. Adjani plays Lucy, a character updated to be stronger and more active in fighting Dracula (Van Helsing, by contrast, is less of a hero, becoming more of a dispassionate observer than a driver of the story).
  

  Herzog’s visual style is on full display, with lots of well composed shots of nature and landscapes during the various travel scenes and some wonderfully creepy atmosphere all throughout. The sight of the town square, filled with “plague” victims’ coffins and tons upon tons of rats, is memorable and disturbing. Alas, these beautiful visuals and dreamlike fugues also tend to slow the pace down to a crawl, which, when combined with our familiarity with the story, does present a bit of an issue. The ending has been updated to be more ambiguous, with Dracula defeated but the vampire menace set to continue. A worthwhile updating of an old classic. ***

• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V: The Shinning
• Rosemary’s Baby (trailer)
• Delicatessen (trailer)
• The Tenant – A man rents an apartment where the previous tenant has attempted suicide. Soon, the man believes his neighbors are trying to drive him to a similar end. Adjani plays the previous tenant’s friend, but isn’t given too much to do throughout the film. The story is more focused on, well, the new tenant (played by Roman Polanski, who also directs).
  

  Unfortunately, the pacing is rather slow here as well, with not much happening until the halfway point,

  and still taking its time before the really creepy stuff starts to poke out (even then, the good stuff is awfully short). While it does a decent job capturing the paranoia, it didn’t need to take quite so much time to get there. The ending is a little on the nonsensical side, but it at least represent an interesting idea and provokes a little thought. I generally try my best to separate art from the artist, but fugitive child rapist Roman Polanski is one person I do struggle with on those grounds. This film, at least, was made before Polanski’s crime, which helps a little, but it’s still something I find sticking in the back of my mind. If I knew Adjani’s involvement was so small, I probably wouldn’t have watched. **

• Inside (trailer)
• All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (trailer)
• High Tension (trailer)
• Deadly Circuit (aka Mortelle randonnée) – An aging private detective is put on the case of a serial killer who murders and robs rich men on their wedding night. The woman reminds the detective of his long lost daughter, so instead of completing the case, he follows and aids her when he can, eventually making contact. It’s a weird little film. I can’t say as though I follow the whole thing particularly well, but it’s entertaining in a stereotypical French way.
  

  Adjani is the serial killer here, and she pulls off all the different looks and costumes well. She’s got enough seductive charisma that you can kinda see why all these different guys would fall for her, but on the other hand, the relationships all seem so rushed and it doesn’t make a ton of sense. The detective’s motivations are also a little odd and I’m not entirely sure they make sense either. It’s ultimately not a particularly memorable film, but it’s got some interesting ideas and might be worth a watch for completists (as to what they’re trying to complete… I’m not sure, actually). **

• They’re All Gonna Laugh At You (robot chicken)
• Grace (trailer)
• Spring (trailer)
• Possession – I watched this last year and frankly, my original thoughts remain:
  

  Dear lord, what the hell did I just watch? The batshit insanity quotient just went way up in this year’s 6WH. Ostensibly about a bad divorce, it turns out that the woman’s new beau is, um, some sort of tentacled monster (apparently Andrzej Zulawski’s elevator pitch for the movie was “A film about a woman who fucks an octopus.”). Dial performances up to 11; Sam Niell is always great at playing unhinged and Isabelle Adjani is absolutely fearless (dat “miscarriage” scene). Frankly, I have no idea what to make of this movie. Watch it if you dare.

  Upon rewatching, I have tried to make some more sense of the movie, but it remains impenetrable, though I think I may have connected an extra dot or two. It’s visually quite impressive and the atmosphere of obsession and dread is quite effective.

  

  There’s a lot of things in this movie that I’m not terribly excited about (there’s a lot of manic arguing early on, for example), but for some reason, I find myself compelled to keep watching, and the payoffs are well worth the effort… even if you have no idea what’s happening. There’s a sequence in an empty subway hallway that is just a tour de force, even though, again, it makes no real sense. I think it’s supposed to be a kind of miscarriage. Whatever the case, Anjani sells it, and she sells it hard. As mentioned above, this is a fearless performance, and it was the one that made me want to explore more of her filmography in the first place. It doesn’t exactly have mass appeal, making it hard to recommend, but it’s got a certain cult appeal. As with last time, it’s a difficult film to rate, but I’ll just throw it *** and leave it at that…

That finishes up this week. Later this week, we’ll take a look at a book of horror movie recommendations, and next week’s theme will be Nazis (I hate these guys). In the meantime, head over to Film Thoughts, as Zack is already outpacing my viewings and posting writeups every day.

I was just a hair too young for Stephen King’s apex in the mid-80s, meaning that I sorta got the gist of the phenomenon without really experiencing much of it. I remember the hype and even seeing commercials for King books on TV and various adults going crazy for his stuff, but as a young kid, I was less sanguine about scary stuff. I didn’t really get into horror (or, for that matter, reading) until the early 90s, but once I was on board, I certainly did burn through a bunch of Stephen King novels and film adaptations. One such event was the It miniseries that aired on television in November of 1990 (I viewed it on one of those fancy double-VHS sets in the mid-90s). I don’t remember much about It except for a vague outline of the plot and characters. I enjoyed it and could see why it was a popular story, but didn’t think too much about it. I should also note that I haven’t read the book, mostly because I’m the worst. But I can tell it’s one of King’s more popular works.

Enter It: Chapter One, the latest big-screen adaptation of King’s work (hot off the heels of the craptacular Dark Tower movie) that’s been lighting the box office on fire. In just a couple of weeks, it’ll have become the most successful King adaptation of all time, even adjusting for inflation (and there’s talk of it becoming the most successful horror film of all time as well). When I first heard of this adaptation, I wasn’t particularly intrigued, but there was a buzz surrounding the movie that did make me a little curious. This is usually a fruitful combination: good source material and competent filmmaking team, coupled with lowered expectations. As a result, I found myself greatly enjoying this movie, much more than I thought I would. It definitely has flaws, but it’s a fun, crowd-pleasing experience, such that its surprising success actually feels earned.

Derry, Maine appears to be a quaint little town on the surface, but its history is one of cyclic tragedy, and since children are beginning to disappear at an alarming rate, it seems this tragedy is still ongoing. Set in the late 80s, seven kids, each with their own hangups and fears, come to figure out and even confront the evil plaguing the town. This evil manifests itself as representations of their fears, but also and most often in the form of a clown named Pennywise.

The story is told entirely from the kids perspective, which is a notable change from the book/previous miniseries (which alternated between the kids and adult versions of the kids, both groups fighting It during one of its cyclical feeding periods), but one that I think works out well. Not having read the book, I can’t say for sure, but I suspect this sort of narrative structure works great on the page, but would be really difficult to pull off on screen. Plus, from what I gather, they made enough other changes to the specifics that this more straightforward approach also leaves open the possibility that maybe some of the characters won’t survive. I’m sure that, from a book reader’s perspective, this sort of tension is more meta; are we scared that a member of the Losers Club won’t survive? Or are we scared that killing one of those kids is just a terrible idea and would ruin the movie? Whatever the case, given the constraints of a single movie and a 1100+ page adaptation, this seems like a reasonable choice.

And the kids are great. Many a film has floundered on child actors, but every single one of the kids in this movie does a good job. They have great chemistry with one another and whether they’re tooling around on their bikes (evoking that 80s Amblin feel) or bickering with each other (in ways that provide a good, comedic release after the various horror tensions), they’re an entertaining bunch. Since there’s seven of them and this is a little over two hours long, the characters could feel like stereotypes, but each one has just enough individuality that they are at least distinct, recognizable, and likable on their own.

On the flip side, Bill Skarsgard does a great job as Pennywise. It couldn’t have been an easy task to reprise the role made famous by Tim Curry’s performance, but Skarsgard clears the bar. The film does rely too heavily on CGI for some of Pennywise’s scares, but when Skarsgard is allowed to give a quirky smile or contort his body in a practical way, it’s quite effective.

Director Andy Muschietti is obviously good at wrangling the kids and getting good performances out of them, but he has some visual chops too. It is a well composed movie, and Muschietti knows how to manipulate an audience. While he relies too heavily on audio stingers and jump scares, he is adept enough at executing them that these sequences don’t feel like cheap shots. There might be a few too many horror setpieces too, which can lead to fatigue towards the end of the movie and maybe muck with the pacing at times. On the whole, though, this is more calibrated to an audience viewing, and it’s supremely successful on that front. All the craft goes towards generating a crowd-pleasing experience. This may rub fans of slow-burn horror the wrong way, and I’m sure that King’s book allows for a much deeper, more immersive experience, but given the constraints, this film admirably achieves its modest goals.

There are several memorable setpieces. The opening with Georgie is very well done and compares favorably to the previous iteration (and, as I understand it, to the book as well). I particularly enjoyed the painting that Stan was terrified of, and that sequence was wholly terrifying. A scene in the library, where one of our characters discovers a historical tragedy involving Easter, then follows a balloon into the basement is quite good. The slideshow presentation when Pennywise shows up is also great. Some of the more simple interactions, such as Bev’s conversations with her father or the pharmacist, are also quite creepy. Most of the scary sequences achieve a certain base level of effectiveness, even the ones that rely on CGI.

It does feel like there could be a lot more depth here. It’s not entirely clear how Pennywise works or how the kids manage to defeat It, other than vague platitudes about fear. What little history we get is very affecting, but the runtime limits how much of this can be explored. I haven’t read the book, but I imagine many of these gaps are filled on the page. Again, this is understandable given the limitations of a film project.

I’m calling this It: Chapter One, but that’s only revealed in the ending credits. My guess is that they were hedging their bets here. They couldn’t possibly fit the whole thing into two hours and wisely chose to focus on the kids’ story (which, I will say, ends in a way that is satisfying enough that you don’t feel cheated), but the sequel wasn’t guaranteed. Well, given the box office performance, I think we can now assume that the sequel is forthcoming. Since it will take place 27 years later, they will need an all new cast of grownups, which will probably lead to some familiar faces (i.e. Jessica Chastain for Bev is a fan favorite).

From the Stephen King that I’ve read, I will say my biggest issue is the way he ends his books. I feel like he often writes himself into a corner and only barely manages to find a way out, if at all. I don’t remember details about the miniseries conclusion, but I do remember it being somewhat underwhelming (involving a giant spider). As I understand it, the book goes a little further, so perhaps there’s something interesting to look forward to there. Whatever the case, I’ll almost certainly be checking out the sequel.

This is a crowd-pleasing movie and entertaining experience at the theater. It may not be quite the revelation that the book was, nor is it as effective as some more “serious” horror cinema, but I don’t think it’s really trying to outshine either of those things. It’s just extremely well executed and fun, totally worth seeing in the theater. ***