![]() As a Vice article on folk horror remarks, “Folk horror tests our moral compass. and sooner or later whatever you own comes back home to you.”ĭerry is also the epitome of a town with a skewed moral beliefs system. “You pay for what you get, you own what you pay for. “All I’ve ever gotten and all I have now is somehow due to what we did then, and you pay for what you get in this world,” says an adult Ben Hanscom in the book. In fact, the wealth and success that the members of the Losers’ Club enjoy after leaving Derry is inextricably tied to the fact that they left Derry in the first place. ![]() IT, frequently seen in the form of Pennywise, dwells underneath and within the town, intertwined with not only Derry’s residents but the sewer system which connects the different parts of Derry itself, lending easy association with what Paciorek calls “psychogeography: the hidden landscape of atmospheres, histories, actions and characters which charge environments.” All four of these elements are not only present in IT, but comprise the essence of both the novel and the film adaptation.Īs Paciorek remarks, “Below the foundation of every town is ancient past.” The landscape of Derry, Maine is presented as integral to the evil that wreaks havoc on its residents. Writer and film historian Adam Scovell, who wrote Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange (2017), uses four elements as a guideline to defining the genre: Landscape, Isolation, Skewed Moral Beliefs, and Happening/Summoning. In an article on the Folk Horror Revival site called “From The Forests, Fields and Furrows,” writer Andy Paciorek establishes the timeline of the term itself, noting what he calls “the unholy trinity of Folk Horror cinema, namely, Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973).”įor those unfamiliar, this can be roughly generalized as “British movies of the late 1960s and ’70s that have a rural, earthy association to ancient European pagan and witchcraft traditions or folklore.” Yet Paicorek is quick to point out that Folk Horror can often “leave no universal defining mark of its exact form” and can stretch beyond the borders of not only Britain but also the timeline of the ‘60s and ‘70s. That’s all well and good, some might say, but “Is IT scary?” To answer that, I will argue that not only is IT scary, but that it also deserves a place in the American Folk Horror canon.įolk Horror is a term that recently resumed a place on the pop culture radar thanks to Robert Eggers’ 2015 film The VVitch, but may not be well understood by those outside of hardcore horror film fans. From the close up shot of a sign outside the school that says “Remember the Curfew 7 p.m.” to a reconfiguration of Patrick Hockstetter’s refrigerator of torture into one from which Pennywise unspools himself, there is not a throwaway line or scene to be found. The movie streamlines the information with which the book provides its readers, resulting in a cinematic spectacle that is impressively lean and mean. This removes the clutter that would have resulted had the film tried to show the connections between every location King describes. ![]() In addition, the detailed geography of Derry-including the Kenduskeag River, the Canal, the Barrens, and that labyrinthine sewer system-have all been compressed to point towards one main locus of evil: the house on Neibolt Street, which contains the well leading to the sewers. ![]() They help infuse the movie with an authentic sense of place that is no less significant for their subtle placement within it. Bill Denbrough’s bike Silver and the Paul Bunyan statue make appearances, as do locations such as the Standpipe, Kitchener Ironworks, Freese’s Department Store, and The Tracker Brothers trucking company. Fans of the book will note that many of the touchstones of the novel show up as visual signifiers in the film. IT is structured to appeal to those who have read King’s text as well as those who have not. ![]() Still, the same problem remained: How does one adapt a novel that spans decades, is told through multiple flashbacks by multiple characters, and covers more than 1100 pages of text?ĭirector Andy Muschietti, working from a script penned by Cary Fukunaga, Chase Palmer, and Gary Dauberman, acquitted himself beautifully with IT, a film which not only received considerable critical acclaim, but smashed through several box office records, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated horror movie ever. When the film adaptation of Stephen King’s IT was announced in 2012, the inevitable gnashing of teeth ensued in earnest, despite the fact that few fans would deny the inadequacies of 1990’s TV miniseries. ![]()
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