Stephen King films are like buses. You wait ages for one, and then two come at once. After the lacklustre reception to The Dark Tower, it comes down to the other to prove that King still has it in him to chill us. Lucky for him, that this next film is based off what many consider his Magnum Opus; It. I have read the book and I have even seen the miniseries from way back when. Both gave me the same feeling; a warm, rose-red feeling that marked them both as special; hatred! I have hated every incarnation of It so far. To me, while not without moments, the book was a jarring mess of tonal inconsistencies and an over-abundance of unnecessary descriptions and subplots. The miniseries had the legendary Tim Curry in the spotlight, but that was really all it had going for it. No, I do not like It, and was not jumping with joy to know that yet another version was being made.

So, what is the story of 2017’s It? The film follows a group of seven friends, lovingly named The Losers. They all have their quirks and issues but are mostly good kids, who’s only fear is wrathful parents and psychotic bullies. That is until they all start seeing things. Their worst nightmares come true. Children are missing, presumed dead. And at the centre of it all is a solitary figure; a clown. Finding that they are the only ones who can stop this being, The Losers must face their own fears and inner demons to stop this child-killing presence before they are next.

King was onto something with this story, and it really broke my heart to have such an extreme negative response to it. The trailers and advertisements to this film didn’t help either, it looked too silly to me. It wasn’t until I saw the positive reviews that I got interested. And now that I have seen it I find myself both understanding this reception, and yet feeling a little confused by it too.

It is easily one of the best Stephen King films I have ever seen. I might actually call it the best King film since The Shawshank Redemption. Director Andy Muschietti, who directed the thrilling Mama, did a good job of bringing the story to life and focusing the story, making us never lose sight of what is going on. It is shot beautifully, succeeding in being both visually interesting and dread filled. Accompanying this is a pretty strong script that in my eyes improves on the source material. There are plenty of changes to the book, but it always feels pretty faithful too. Key moments are brought from page to screen very effectively; from the storm-drain scene to the moment when the bully starts carving his name into the fat kid. With that we also get some new additions. Some really work, and some don’t.

But what makes It so special is that we have a horror movie getting the blockbuster treatment. That doesn’t happen anymore, and I’m so glad that we are bringing it back. Despite this blockbuster status, It still feels unique. It has a definite style and is very artistic in some regards. There is a feeling that this is a film from the 1980’s which really matches the film’s setting. We have that feeling we got from films like Gremlins, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Evil Dead and The Thing gave us, and that the show Stranger Things revitalised. With that, we also have the darkness and camp of those aforementioned films gave us, as well as the heart despite itself.

At the centre of all of this is the acting. Child actors are always a gamble, there is no denying it. But, continuing with the recent trend of child actors in Hollywood today, all seven of these kids are really good. Bill, Rich and Eddy’s characters in particular; however, it is easily the actress who plays Beverly who steals the show. Beverly is easily the best character in this film. She captures the heart and soul of the character and is completely believable and she engages you with her character. This is helped by the fact that her scenes with her father – who is implied to be molesting her – are the scariest and most haunting of the entire film. I even thought that the actors who played the one-dimensional bullies were great in their roles too. So, a good story well told, great acting and interesting characters; all we need now is for It to be scary and it had succeeded…oh.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some creepy moments – like the drain scene, the slides, the painting and especially the library – but the film suffers from its own tonal inconsistencies. It’s partly a horror film about a killer stalking kids, with some creepy imagery throughout. But it also feels like Stand By Me and The Goonies in moments and then other times it becomes The Evil Dead, with an over-the-top nature to it. It’s because of this I found It to be more hilarious than scary. I heard praise for how scary the storm drain was, but the build up to the kill had me sniggering at it. The same happened again when they search for It in what I can only describe as Freddy Kruger’s house from Dream Warriors. Like I thought it would be, I found it all too silly to be scary. There’s a sense of Muschietti trying too hard to get a scream that he is rewarded with a laugh.

While we are on the subject of laughing, I think it’s time to talk about Pennywise the Dancing Clown. My praise goes to Bill Skarsgard. This must have been a hard role to play, not to mention the weight on his shoulders from fan expectations. Yet he pulled it off. We have a good performance for our villain, I have nothing bad to say about the actor. The clown himself on the other hand… I heard that he was scary; that unlike Tim Curry, this was not a silly clown, but a monster who will fuel your nightmares for days to come. I couldn’t disagree more. This clown was hilarious! The design is cartoony. The way he talks, a deliberate alien way to us, made me chuckle. The things that he does and say are akin to Kruger and the demons from The Evil Dead. I loved him for the fun he brought to the film. In a strange way, while this is the better film, I do think that Tim Curry played the scarier clown. Yes, Curry joked a lot, but when he was silent he was hair-raisingly chilling. Because he looked like a clown, there was this creeper aspect to him; an uncomfortable reminder of John Wayne Gacy that made him more terrifying. This clown looks like a monster, and sadly monsters aren’t scary.

It is actually called It Chapter One, with a hopeful second part on the way very soon. So for those who get confused by the ending, that’s why. To be fair, if there was any book that should be split into two films it’s It, with its 1,100 odd pages. I was pleasantly surprised by It and would gladly see It again. Horror films have their work cut out for them this year now. Not perfect, by any means, and certainly more silly than scary, but it never fails to entertain. With how well it’s doing I think that Chapter Two is assured. After witnessing this, I wait for it with baited but eager breath.

By Last Caress.

Red begins early in the morning. So early, it’s really still late the previous night. A man awakes with a start, as if from a nightmare, seconds before his alarm sounds. He quickly readies himself and exits his spartan single-room apartment. Elsewhere, a couple stagger to their hotel room. The woman is having to prop her man up, and he collapses on the bed as soon as he arrives at it. Outside the hotel, the man from the spartan apartment looks up at the hotel room, takes a belt of liquor from a flask, and makes his way up there, hold-all in hand. What’s happening here?

Well, the woman is Mia (Francesca Fowler), a prostitute with instructions to bring men up to this room, having plied them with spiked booze first. The unconscious gentleman on the bed is her latest client/victim. The man with the hold-all making his way up to the room is Niklas, a surgeon who listens to Beethoven while he removes the victim’s organs. Welcome to the “red” market, the illicit netherworld of illegal organ harvesting. Niklas hates what he does and hates himself for doing it, but he’s in thrall to Ed (Dervla Kirwan), the terrifying red market kingpin who won’t release Niklas from the life in which he’s been ensnared. One night, Ed arrives with a job too far. Can Niklas go through with it? Can he refuse? Dare he refuse?

The German-born Serbian star of Red, Branko Tomovic, has some small credits in some big productions such as The Bourne Ultimatum (Greengrass, 2007) and Fury (Ayer, 2014). He has a great Eastern-European face making him the sort of character actor coveted by such TV juggernauts as Showtime’s Homeland and Fox’s 24. Indeed, Mr. Tomovic has enjoyed a small role in the former but it is from the latter where folk may well recognise him, from his time spent on the excellent 24: Live Another Day (2014) as Belcheck, a Serbian contract killer and one of Jack Bauer’s few allies. Here, he gives a wonderfully spiky, edge-of-panic performance, imbuing his character with an overage of guilt married to a lack of rest. He is assisted magnificently in these endeavours by Francesca Fowler (who starred alongside Mr. Tomovic on Steve Stone’s feature Schism) as prostitute/lure Mia and by Dervla Kirwan, the Dubliner adopted as a national treasure in the UK for her many beloved TV roles (particularly the BBC smash hits of the 1990s Ballykissangel and Goodnight Sweetheart) who gives a short but startlingly vicious performance here as crime boss Ed, a truly horrific character.

Red is also Mr. Tomovic’s directorial debut (as well as having co-written it with newcomer Paul D Clancy) so it’s a real tour de force from him, and he successfully injects as much tension from behind the camera as he projects in front of it.

Red is not a happy tale, and whilst its hardly a gore-fest it’s not one for the particularly squeamish either. But it’s a taut and immersive twenty-minute ride and if that sounds as though it might appeal, you’ll be delighted to learn that Red is freely available for you to watch, below. Enjoy!

RED from Branko Tomovic on Vimeo.

Orla Smith.

Nazo Dharejo’s story is extraordinary.

It’s standard for films based on true stories to end with title cards that tell the audience what happened next. I was more moved reading that text at the end of My Pure Land than I was throughout the whole of the rest of the film.

My Pure Land ― which markets itself as a feminist western ― successfully exposes Pakistan’s corrosive patriarchal values. Nazo and her sister are taught by their father to defend against invading men who intend to claim their property.

They are fit with checked shirts and AK-47s when they practice defence; their father laughs and comments that he appears to have two sons. The fact that the film ― which is written and directed by a man, Sarmad Masud ― considers itself ‘feminist’, is at first worrying. Masud appears to be equating female empowerment with women adopting the traits of men.

However, as the film progresses it become clear that Masud intends to challenge that trope, which is initially held by some of the film’s male characters and internalised by its female ones. When the real danger comes, the girls aren’t in their ‘boys clothes’. They are dressed in saris. They are told that they are ‘better than sons’.

Masud should be commended for giving thought to his approach of his female characters. However, he still adopts the ‘feminist’ label a little too carelessly.

What My Pure Land needs is more focus ― and what it needs to focus on is Nazo. Instead, we chop back and forth between two timelines, with a lot of screen time devoted to Nazo’s father in prison. Switching between past and present is mostly unnecessary and confusing ― although it is occasionally effective when it powerfully contrasts life with death.

The best elements of My Pure Land come hand in hand with its worst.

Overuse of music sabotages real emotion in scenes that might otherwise have been effective. There are snatches of startling, arresting cinematography ― but Masud is unable to harness those images for their full potential.

I’m almost tempted to recommend My Pure Land because of the woman at its centre. Then again, skimming Wikipedia would be just as useful and far less time consuming. My Pure Land is frustratingly factual. I wish it was as interested in who Nazo is than it is in what she did.

Orla Smith.

There isn’t much to say about Kills on Wheels. That’s saying something, for a film that seems built to stand out. This Hungarian submission for last year’s foreign language Oscar has crafted its appeal around an eye catching premise: it has been sold as a ‘buddy-movie about a wheelchair-using gang of assassins. If your first thought is recent capers starring older veterans such as Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, you’re off the mark. The poster for Kills on Wheels shows a young man in a wheelchair, posing proudly with a gun in his hand. This isn’t a silly comedy about pensioners past their prime. It is a film that attempts to give young (or younger) disabled people their own action stars.

The film’s exploration of what advantages disability might bring to a criminal is its most interesting element. The central trio includes two young men – Zoli and Barba – who share a room in a rehabilitation facility, and an older man they meet named Rupasov, who has recently been released from prison. Rupasov is a hitman who, in one of the film’s only sparks of wit and imagination, is able to kill people by hiding his gun in a plastic bag placed on his wheelchair. Nobody suspects a thing. In a busy public square, no-one spares him a single glance of suspicion. Kills on Wheels touches on ideas of society’s precious attitude towards the disabled ― but it gets distracted by the clichés of the common crime drama along the way, failing to dig deeper.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF3GWhtoFg8

Thankfully, the film itself doesn’t hold those precious attitudes. The disabled main characters never feel as though they are defined by their disabilities, but their characterisation is still thin. Director Attila Till stated: ‘It was crucial to me to make a movie about disabled people where they finally aren’t played by actors, but get the opportunity to act themselves and be the real heroes’. It’s a commendable sentiment, and it’s refreshing to see actual disabled people taking on disabled roles. They inhabit their characters naturally and with confidence, but are hindered by uninteresting material.

The film’s most worrying element is its attitude towards women. Women are only ever visible as worrying mothers, nurturers and objects of desire. Even then, they are given scarcely little screen time ― this being a film chiefly centred on male relationships ― but misogyny is rarely ever fully out of the picture. In one scene, when the central trio are fishing together, one of the younger characters goes on a sudden tirade that is unspeakably misogynistic: he complains about how their nurses in the rehabilitation home ‘totally lack sexuality’, and it gets worse from there. His thoughts are then reinforced by an older character. This is a film that attempts to be uplifting and entertaining, so why is it that its director has decided to alienate and insult all of his female viewers for no rhyme or reason?

As that behaviour may suggest, we are given little reason to like these characters, and they are given little reason to like each other. Till introduces a ‘life or death’ medical plotline relating to one of the main character’s disability, and it seems incredibly forced. For a filmmaker who preaches the virtues of positive representation of disabled people on screen, he isn’t doing a particularly good job of letting them live freely within their own narratives. This extraneous plotline is unnecessary and convoluted ― and on top of all that, it asks us to care about someone who doesn’t feel like a real human being in the first place, let alone a sympathetic one.

Kills on Wheels is competently crafted and performed, but incompetently scripted and characterised. Despite its eye-catching premise, it is indistinguishable from any other wannabe crime saga. This film could have been commendable for allowing disabled people to exist in the kind of narrative usually reserved for able-bodied people, or it could have been commendable for exploring the way disabled people are treated in society and the unforeseen advantages that could afford them in those sorts of narratives. It fails to do either successfully.

By Anthony Reyes.

It: A portrayal of childhood and terror

As an avid fan of Stephen King’s literary masterpiece of the same name, I was skeptical when I discovered that a new adaptation of It was being produced. Adaptations from novel to the screen are always a risk, but the stories of Stephen King always bring an extra layer of insecurity. Despite featuring many themes of the supernatural and horror in his stories, Stephen King is a humanist at heart. He frequently writes about universal topics such as the loss of innocence, loneliness, and the pleasures and instability of small town America. But since the movie industry is a business and distribution companies needs to market their products, the main selling point of most of the adaptations from Stephen King’s stories is the horror aspect. And that can be plainly seen with It. Since the start of this film’s development, the horror of a killer crown terrorizing kids of a small town has been piled on so that mass audiences get hyped up to watch this film on September 8^th. But fans of the source material as myself know that It is special for many reasons other than the supernatural horror side to it. As I entered the theater for a special advanced screening of It that I was invited to, I hoped that Andres Muschietti, the director, kept those reasons in mind when making this film.

The story of It follows a group of children living in the small town of Derry, Maine. Brought together by their shared isolation and status as social outcasts, Bill, Eddie, Richie, Beverly, Ben, Stanley, and Mike form the Losers club. They are also brought together by the fact that they each have come across a terrifying clown called Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) who exploits their personal fears in order to feast off of them. Disillusioned by surrounding adults, together they try to find a way to defeat the clown to stop him from hurting anyone else.

Having watched Andres Muschietti’s Mama, I was confident that It had potential to be a great horror film and coming of age story.

Muschietti knows how to successfully balance horror with emotion, which is horribly important for this story. These children, led by Bill Denbrough, have all been through horrible events in their lives. They are victims of life’s cruel touch, from abusive fathers to gas lighting mothers. They are bullied and harassed relentlessly by other kids. Not in a light, playful manner either. These kids are beaten and held at knifepoint by Henry Bowers and his gang. They even chase after Mike for being black and Ben for being fat. The film did a wonderful job of establishing their status as losers. They are scared. They are alone. They have nothing to do with their time except avoid bullies. They’ve each been terrorized by a supernatural clown. So, the natural next step would be for them to come together and unite. Muschietti succeeds in relishing those moments of unity. After all the hell each character has been through, the moments in which they are carefree and are just enjoying being kids together are the strength of the entire story.

This film also knew how to establish the role of every member of this group, which helps when the main character is an ensemble. Bill Denbrough is the leader, the brave one who has no issue charging forward against Pennywise. Ben Hanscom, despite being terribly insecure due to being overweight, is a clever thinker. He knows how to research and find solutions to problems. Beverly Marsh is the confident one, the girl who can get the boys out of their shells. Eddie Kaspbrak is the loyal one who overcomes many of his fears in order to help his best friend Bill. Richie Tozier is the wisecracking jokester of the group, who finds something to say at every turn. Stanley Uris is the skeptical one of the Losers club, often being unsure of whether the group should take on It or not. Mike Hanlon is the one with a long connection with Derry, with his family and the color of his skin leading him to the others. These roles establish the importance of each member to the Losers Club, and how they can only be effective against Pennywise together. The casting for Muschietti’s It really reflected how dedicated the filmmakers were to Stephen King’s story. Each actor played their role with precise vulnerability that later turns into budding confidence. Their performances helped portray the character arcs that they all experience throughout It, the one that takes them from innocent, small town children to the fighters that must save their town from the monster that wants to feed on it.

While the emotional arcs of these characters are ultimately the entire crux of the film, Andres Muschietti was very creative on the way the horror was to be conveyed. Despite being focused on children, the horror is by no means childlike. I was surprised by the lengths It went to in order to scare the audience, but delighted on how effective it was. From the scene at the beginning when Pennywise meets George at the sewer drain, the audience becomes thrown into the world of a relentless monster. Muschietti does not leave up. He uses every horrific and violent detail that he can use to build a world where the adults have been so traumatized that only children can fight the dancing clown. Bill Skargård’s portrayal of Pennywise the Dancing Clown was a joy to watch, but also incredibly frightening. At some points, the clown was wildly eccentric, relying on physicality to terrify. He would dance, jump around, shapeshift. And while those moments were terrifying to watch, Skarsgård also pulled off the most chilling aspect of Pennywise: what he represented to the children. He represented fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of not being in control, of your fate being in someone’s hands. Skarsgård hit all those notes impressively. He made Pennywise’s very presence earth shattering, which is a feeling that barely went away throughout the whole film. When you combine Skarsgård’s performance with the nerve wracking cinematography, you get a horror movie experience that stays with you long after you leave the theater.

To the children of Stephen King’s story, the only thing more terrifying than Pennywise the Dancing clown is the idea of losing each other, or returning to their own lives. Being a kid is hard. Nobody listens to these characters, nobody pays them any mind. Some of them think that they are invisible. Every single member of the Losers club struggle with their own demons, their own personal hell that they escape from when they’re together. Stephen King likes to write about the loss of innocence, but these kids have lost their innocence a long time ago. It was stolen from them by parents or other external forces that disregarded them as human beings. The fight against It is a fight to reclaim their innocence, because It represents everything that they’re afraid of, everything that has ever victimized them. Muschietti understood that and did everything possible to establish the bravery that these kids display to fight the dancing clown. There is a speech around the middle of the film delivered by Bill Denbrough where he explains why he feels the need to face Pennywise. It is one of the more eye opening moments of the film. You see the emotional weight on everybody’s shoulders, how much is at stake if they give into their fear. Producing a horror film with great emotional balance is difficult enough, but when childhood innocence is added to the structure, it would be easy to depend more on the horror than the story arcs of the characters.

But It beautifully depends on its young characters to carry the film, to make the audience sympathize with them and see why they matter.

What a person who has read Stephen King’s It might know that a person who hasn’t read the novel doesn’t know is that this 2017 film is only the first installment in a two-part story. It spans across three decades: when Pennywise appears to the kids and twenty-seven years later, when they come back to Derry to finish off the clown one and for all. This film covers the first part, and Muschietti makes it a point to give hints that this story has not come to an end. As the film establishes the roles of each character within the Losers club, you can see where the characters might end up in the future when the second film begins. The kids also establish that Pennywise comes out of hibernation every twenty-seven years, and they keep that in mind as they film ends. They look to the future and swear a blood oath to finish off the Dancing Clown if he were to ever reappear. And although news of the It 2 has been relatively thin, this film promises a continuation of this story. I’m sure we’ll watch closely as Muschietti embarks on telling the story of the adult Losers club.

I was skeptical going into Andres Muschietti’s It for many reasons that are all attributed to being devoted to the source material. There was doubt within me that the film would focus too much on exploiting the horror of the story and not focusing on portraying the emotional weight that comes with being haunted by a force that feeds off your fear. However, I was impressed to see how well Muschietti could get me invested not just in Pennywise the Clown but every single member of the Losers club. These kids were not afraid of a clown. They were afraid to live their lives, to become used to the abuse and neglect that they have been subject to. Sure, Muschietti might indulge in some horror movie clichés such as jump scares, but every aspect of story and filmmaking is used to heighten the horrific story of child hood and monsters.

It is a powerful horror, coming of age drama, just what a lover of Stephen King’s original novel would hope for.