It may be strange to consider it, since he's only appeared on film (TV, actually) once before, but Pennywise the clown is among our most icon villains created in the last 30 years.
It was actually 31 years ago that Stephen King published
It, what some would consider his masterpiece, assuming they hadn't read his
other 1,000+ page book,
The Stand. But in those 31 years, millions upon millions of people have read the story about the malevolent clown living in the sewers under Derry, Maine, and certainly some percentage of them also saw the 1990 TV miniseries, which is one of the few TV miniseries (along with
The Stand) that I actually include in my lists of films (mostly because I included them before I had a better conception of what that list meant to me, so they were grandfathered in).
Tim Curry played Pennywise in 1990, and did so iconically. Although I haven't seen
Stephen King's It since then, I'm pretty sure Curry was one of its biggest selling points. I can say for sure that the unfilmmable ending, executed in particularly pedestrian fashion here, was not.
So who would play Pennywise when a theatrical version was finally made in 2017? Who could possibly fill Curry's shoes?
It was a worry for a while. At first they announced this guy, when Cary Fukunaga sent us all aflutter by signing on to direct:
Especially in this picture, you can easily imagine the guy looking particularly sinister with clown makeup applied, can't you? I haven't always thought of Will Poulter as a particularly villainous type, but I understand he's a monster in the movie whose conflicting shooting schedule caused him to drop out of
It:
Detroit, which will not open here until November.
Fukunga -- the visionary creator of
True Detective, and director of
Sin Nombre and
Jane Eyre -- also dropped out of
It, and with that, my hopes for the project seriously dwindled. If someone could have done right by
It -- the ending isn't the only part that seems unfilmmable -- it would have been Fukunaga.
When Fukunaga was replaced by Andres Muschietti, who now calls himself Andy, my hopes experienced a bit of an uptick. I really liked Muschietti's film
Mama, which seemed to promise specifically good things about the type of imagery he could bring to
It. But then I heard that this was the new Pennywise:
Huh?
Who
is that guy?
It's Bill Skarsgard, but I wouldn't have known him from a hole in the wall. I think I knew that he was Alexander Skarsgard's brother, though I might have also just assumed that because of the uncommon Nordic surname. But that didn't give me any additional confidence. Alexander is a good actor who is in some films I love, but he's not sinister. If anything, his brother seemed even less so, as he boasts the kind of leading man good looks that got him cast in a teen dystopia movie like
Allegiant.
But this is where things like auditions come in.
However he got his foot in the door, and I'm sure I could read about it somewhere online, Skarsgard must have given a take on Pennywise that really impressed Muschietti, or more likely, casting director Rich Delia. And I'm not surprised, because the final version really impressed me as well.
The moment I heard Pennywise open his mouth for the first time, I thought "Oh ... yes."
It's not that Skarsgard's interpretation is unexpected in some way, necessarily. It's unexpected in that I don't know the guy (from a hole in the wall) and I don't have any expectations of someone I don't know. But the actual mechanics of the performance are not necessarily unexpected. Pennywise is a demented clown, and Skarsgard gives us a demented clown.
But even in saying the name "Georgie," as he does with his first victim while peering eerily out of a sewer at a small child, you get the sense of the expected boisterousness of a children's entertainer twisted into murderous intent. He's hyper, but it's because he's trying desperately to squelch the monster inside until he can spring it on his victim. He's so hyper that spittle and drool come forth from his mouth. And when he just can't play the role anymore, his face slackens for a moment into a kind of catatonia. This is when Georgie realizes he's not in the presence of any normal children's entertainer. But at this point it's too late.
Skarsgard maintains this sadistic balance throughout, but to call it sadism implies a certain type of premeditation of which Pennywise is not capable. He's a jabbering monster, and he keeps it together long enough on most occasions to produce a facsimile of demented clowndom. Other times he just jabbers, and jabbers in frightening ways.
It is also the rare case of the CG reinforcing the performance rather than overwhelming it. A number of the Pennywise set pieces rely on the digital warping of Skarsgard's physiognomy, but in every case it heightens the horrifying performance Skarsgard is giving, rather than undermining it.
I was put in mind of a couple other memorable demented performances while watching Skarsgard. For one I think you can't help but think of Heath Ledger's Joker, as the Joker is also a clown of sorts, whose smeared makeup is emblematic of his inner turmoil. Skarsgard is not at Ledger's level, certainly, but the fact that the comparison is even earned is a very positive outcome. Then in a few moments I got a whiff of Vincent D'Onofrio in
The Cell, during the more wickedly big and unhinged moments of his catatonic serial killer, Karl Stargher.
Although the Pennywise bits of
It were clearly my favorite, the
Stranger Things-inflected aspects of the relationship between the kids are also done well. I was particularly taken with the performance of Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh; she seems bound to break out. The combined elements of the film are done well enough that I flirted with giving it four stars, though I ultimately landed on 3.5. Something essentially unfilmmable about
It still holds it back, but I may one day come to consider it as a four.
Part of that may depend on the promised sequel, which I hope will still be forthcoming -- just before the end we learn what I had hoped, which is that this is only chapter one. However, chapter two does not show as in production on IMDB, and since that would involve an adult cast of different actors (presumably saving only Skarsgard), perhaps they are waiting to see how
It does before moving forward.
I really hope it does move forward, and that was something I certainly wasn't sure I'd be saying when I took my seat.
So thanks for that, Muschietti and Skarsgard. You've done right by this material, and you've proven my concerns unfounded.
