How can you eat a greasy croissant while you're cutting up dead bodies? Sweetheart, I've been doing this twenty-two years, alright? Once you've seen an eight-month-old microwaved to death... everything else is just old hat. About the overall gist of this movie. Saw a lot of love for this online. I thought it was fine, but nothing super special. Hell of a costume for the killer though. And his use of body language and his silence are pretty creepy. However, felt like it relied a lot on shock value--I mean, it was very shocking/disturbing--but that type of movie doesn't really do it for me. Brutal and sick.
Plot runs thus, it's Halloween and this these chicks run into and become fodder for a truly sadistic supernatural murderer named Art the Clown. They run, he gives chase, commits murder, repeat. These murders are some next level sick shit, by the way.
Written and directed by one Damien Leone. Also in the girl are the likes of Catherine Corcoran, Matt McAllister, Pooya Mohseni, and Samantha Scaffidi. Don't feel bad if you don't know them because no one does. Guy named David Howard Thornton plays Art the Clown. Looks like a much more terrifying Crazy Joe Davola from Seinfeld when he dressed up like Pagliacci in "The Opera."
Tara Heyes, played by Jenna Kanell, is the final girl who ends up looking all fucked up. I think this is shown at the beginning but I can't quite tell if that is her or another chick.
Apparently this is the second feature film appearance of the Art the Clown character. The first was Leone's 2013 anthology film All Hallows' Eve, which sounds pretty interesting. Chick watches horror movies with the kids she is babysitting that feature the character. He ends up coming alive and doing what he does. Might check it out.
"You diggin' what you see, pops?" "I reckon I do!" Not too shabby. One of my favorite Rob Zombie movies. Cool premise. Ticks off a few boxes for me. Interesting/creepy locale (a funhouse of murder). Cast I'm pretty into. Period piece from the 1970s. Fast-paced and over-the-top. Still a little bleak for my taste though.
Gist is that a bunch of carnies are kidnapped and forced to fight a bunch of psycho clowns in a fucked up funhouse. This is part of a game where they have to survive for 12 hours and then are theoretically free to go. No one has ever survived the 12 hours though.
Movie stars Sheri Moon Zombie, a real beauty. Plus she and Rob are vegan. Scores them major cool points, obviously. Jeff Daniel Phillips who I mostly know from other Rob Zombie movies. Was also in Zodiac, briefly, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and he was one of the GEICO cavemen (the one that ordered the roast duck). Meg Foster, she was in two of my all-time favorite cult classics, Blind Fury, and They Live. Richard Brake. Think of him as The Chemist from Mandy.
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Others you'll recognize include Malcolm McDowell, from, you know, A Clockwork Orange. Elizabeth Daily who was Dottie in Pee-wee's Big Adventure. She aged remarkably well. Miller from Repo Man(Tracey Walter) has a brief cameo. Also recognize the character Death-Head from the most overrated movie of all-time, The Big Lebowski. He's one of the Nihilists.
Get a little of that insane Rob Zombie dialogue, but it's played down from say Halloween when the family just cusses at each other and talk about their genitals in the most disgusting way possible. You know, just like your family does. But, yeah, toned down. Do get a group of ladies saying "Sucky, sucky, sucky. Fucky, fucky, fucky. Juicy, juicy, juicy. Money, money, money," while gesturing toward their crotches.
MVP of the movie is Brake. Basically is a more deranged version of The Chemist, but he's on point with that type of role. Or as his character, Doom-Head, says, "What I do? Unfortunately for you, I do real well!" Does have some insane lines he gets to give, "Now, you may think you see a grease-painted performer sitting before you. But trust me - I'm not here to brighten your dismal day; I am here to end your miserable life." So, yeah, insane movie. But fun in the end. Good late summer, early fall flick. Check that shit out.
It was so hyped that there was almost no way that it was not going to disappoint, at least a little bit. About the time we collective had decided this, critics came back and said, "no, believe the hype, for reals." While It doesn't quite live up to all that, it was a very solid movie, especially for horror, which seems to be finally getting some respect as a genre. Above is my Dr. Carver, Auteur Autopsy review. Enjoy!
The film follows seven bullied adolescents who come together to form the "Losers' Club" when a supernatural clown terrorizes them and kidnaps and eats children in the sewer system, where he resides, in town of Derry, ME. Along the way, we witness their growing pains like dealing with a sociopath, love triangles, and their parents (who are the worst). All that being said, this is basically nostalgia porn. It has its moments where it is scary but if you could handle Stranger Things then you can handle this.
The movie is only the second feature film of up-and-comer Andy Muschietti, which is extremely impressive, and stars mostly unknowns in Jaeden Lieberher as the leader of the Losers' Club Bill Denbrough and Bill Skargard (who was in Hemlock Grove [the rich vampire one] and Atomic Blonde and is the son of Stellan Skargard who was the killer in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo among other things) as the immediately terrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown or It. Rounding out the rest of the Losers are Jack Dylan Grazer who sort of stole the show with his dry humor as Eddie Kaspbrak who is the smallish sickly one with asthma, Chosen Jacobs as Mike Hanlon--the black one, Sophia Lillis as Bev Marsh--the girl that Bill makes out with at the end, Wyatt Oleff as Stan Uris--the jewish one, Jeremy Ray Taylor who is the chubby one that also kisses and is into Bev, and Finn Wolfhard (whom you'll recognize as the main boy in Stranger Things [I think he does a better job here btw])as Richie Tozier who is the funny one with glasses. I don't know if this is a spoiler or not, it won't really make any sense if you don't know at least this so just roll with it, the movie is first of at least two movies movies based on Stephen King's book of the same name.
Pros: The acting is flawless across the board. Where do they find these kids? Skargard was really good too. Like when he is talking to Georgie, the first kid we see him kill, trying to get him to come up to the sewer grate, you hear a kind of desperation in voice that you didn't get with Tim Curry, the original Pennywise. Seeing my childhood years, I'd be about the same age as the kids in 1989, portrayed on screen is always pretty cool and this film really gets that time period, which is dope. It's just a really sweet movie about child abduction, murder, and cannibalism (though I guess technically not since Pennywise is a
Cons: Not as scary as I wanted it to be. Just a couple of jump scares and one super creepy scene. When Pennywise dances it is more unintentionally hilarious than spooky. They strip down two characters in a way that is pretty irritating.
Random thoughts on It: Here are my sort of complaints and one thing I thought was pretty awesome. First, there are two too many kids for a film of this length, at least in the way that the director/studio decided to do it. Those two kids are Mike and Stan who are basically just the black one and the Jewish one respectively. In the book and the miniseries this was not so. The difference was that they took away the two characters' things and gave them to Ben and Bev, giving them even more screen time. In the book it was Mike who does all the research on the town and discovers the pattern of the clown. In this film this role was given to Ben who had his own thing in the book (he was really good at building stuff). Stan, meanwhile, basically offers nothing. He is sort of the voice of reason, I guess, but less than in King's telling where he has a Spock-like presence. In this adaptation, he comes off more of a wuss. The most irritating thing here is that in the book, Stan saw the dead lights before the battle when they are kids, survived but was unable to completely adjust, and eventually was unable to deal when Pennywise reappears in adulthood (SPOILER FOR THE BOOK: Stan kills himself). SPOILER FOR THE FILM: Here they completely take that shit and give it to Bev which is sort of bull shit.
My biggest fear here is that they are setting up some long, horrible franchise like with The Conjuring movies. Could you imagine them doing prequels or even worse movies where they are old or their children fight Pennywise. Gag. Let's hope they stick with just one more.
The film is not as scary as I was expecting. There were basically two scenes that creeped me out and two scenes that made me jump. The scene in the garage is easily the most insane and where Pennywise is genuinely pretty terrifying and where he twists out of that clock during one of the battle scenes is cool looking and creep city. When he catches the kids he generally just grabs them and is like, "Boogah-boogah! ... Are you scared? ... ... ... Boogah-boogah!"
The movie had way more humor in it than the miniseries. It seems like
they got the kid from Stranger Things just to crack wise, and he does a
great fucking job. Like after they go to the reservoir and the young
girl swims around and suns herself in her underpants and the boys lose
it, the next day she says to them "I need to show you something," and he
asks, sardonically, "More than you showed us yesterday at the quarry"
He is pretty good with the one-liners.Then there is Eddie who is just
super dry and funny as shit. Example: Richie gives him shit about taking
so many pills and he snaps back that he takes them so that he can do
Richie's sister. Or something like that. Just like the kids I grew up
with.
