The Dark Tower has been pronounced dead on arrival – at the time of writing, the preliminary critical consensus has deemed Sony’s fantasy epic to be a glittering, uninspired mess – but those holding out hope for a competent, entertaining Stephen King adaptation can still look toward It reboot with a sense of cautious optimism.
Unlike The Dark Tower, which weighed in at only 95 minutes in length, New Line’s two-part horror revival will stretch past the two-hour mark as it attempts to wrangle King’s Pennywise saga onto the big screen. Told across two distinct time periods – one in the 80s; one in the present day – the author’s page-turner is celebrated as a bona fide classic in the literary horror scene, though when it comes to Andy Muschietti’s cinematic rendition, the Powers That Be have cherry-picked the formative years of The Losers Club and built an intense, R-rated treat, with the proposed sequel set to revisit those characters as adults in order to bring an end to Pennywise once and for all.
But before we fall down the rabbit hole of potential sequels and a vengeful Pennywise, another promo for It – aptly titled It Part 1 – The Losers Club – has crept online for your viewing pleasure. And to his credit, we’re starting to believe Joe Hill’s claim that Andy Muschietti’s reboot has the potential to become one of the scariest films ever made – scary enough to enter a pantheon that hosts such genre-defining classics as Jaws and The Exorcist.
It’s undoubtedly a bold estimation, but given Hill is the son of Stephen King (and therefore well versed in the horror-thriller scene), his comments do present some food for thought, particularly as we come to terms with just how nightmarish Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise has turned out to be.
Granted, a shape-shifting demon isn’t the only cause for concern within the town of Derry, Maine, as The Losers Club will also confront a handful of Derry’s local bullies – namely Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton), Patrick Hockstetter (Owen Teague), Victor Criss (Logan Thompson), and Belch Huggins (Jake Sim).
It Part 1 – The Losers Club debuts on September 8th. Meanwhile, The Dark Tower now faces a long, grueling quest – not unlike that of Roland Deschain’s – if it’s to strike big at this weekend’s box office. Stay tuned for more on that one, while WGTC’s own review will be hitting the site imminently.