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Film: It Chapter Two
Format: Blu-ray from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I liked the first part of It less than a lot of people, but I did like it well enough. I didn’t like the fact that it deviated so much from the source material, and I still say that the best way to handle a book like this one is a 10-part miniseries. Even that might not be enough; two 10-part mini-series might be necessary, but it would be worth it to tell the entire story. I don’t want this to go on a rant, but I can feel the rant coming. I know that there need to be some changes and omissions when going from book to screen, but man, there are a lot of changes here in It Chapter Two that didn’t need to happen.

So, since the rant is absolutely going to make its way out no matter how much I try to resist it, I’m just going to go ahead and post a spoiler warning now. The rest of this post is, for the most part, going to be a discussion of the useless and worthless changes between the book and the movie. This means that there are going to be a lot spoilers for It Chapter Two, but there are also going to be a lot of spoilers for Stephen King’s original novel. Everything from this point forward is, more or less a spoiler for the film or the book.

Green-Eyed (Scary) Monster

Film: Mama
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

Mama is one of those movies that I’ve wanted to watch for some time but have never pulled the trigger on until now. I’m not entirely sure why this is the case. Its executive producer was Guillermo del Toro, and he’s got something close to a magic touch as far as I’m concerned, so this should be a move that I should love. And yet, I think part of the reason I haven’t been truly excited to watch is that I haven’t heard a lot of people raving about it.

The quick wrap-up is that the movie starts with the economic crash in 2008. A broker (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has killed a couple of his partners and then murders his estranged ex-wife. He scoops up his two young daughters and drives off, too fast for the weather and eventually slides off the road. There’s a cabin nearby, and he takes the girls into it, planning on killing them and then himself. Before is does, though, he swept up by some unseen thing that kills him and protects the two girls.

Wednesday Horror: It (2017)

Films: It (2017)
Format: Blu-Ray from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

Earlier, Dell over at Dell on Movies posted a review of It from last year. Like a lot of people, he is pretty effusive in his praise, an opinion I fully understand. I felt like I needed to respond, after a fashion.

I’m old enough to remember when Stephen King’s It was the book that everyone was reading. Hell, I was reading it. The book is something like 1200 pages in hardcover and I read the thing in a week. While there are some moments in it that are completely cringeworthy, it’s a hell of a good story with some of the best moments of King’s writing that I’ve come across—and since I’ve read probably 1/3 to 1/2 of his output, that’s saying something. I have seen the television miniseries from a few decades ago a couple of times. So naturally, when the first half of It came out in 2017, I was interested.

I was well aware that despite this being essentially half of the story that it would probably have many of the problems that the miniseries did. It does. In fact, it has those problems to a significantly higher degree. One of the serious issues with King’s novel as an adaptation is that the damn thing is huge. It’s a good 400 pages longer than The Stand, and when that was adapted for television it had to be cut significantly. It is significantly chopped down into a running time of just over two hours. This has serious repercussions on the story that is told as compared with the original source material.