Monday, September 18, 2017

It (movie review)

It took me a few weeks to realize this movie It at The Bagdad, my neighborhood movie theater, was the same movie as this box office record-setter I'd been reading about, featuring some scary clown.

For context, I was joking about Trump fitting the "scary clown" archetype before going, and then after coming back from the movie I dove into the Steve Bannon interviews, with Charlie Rose. 

So Trump is a student of Jung's I found out.  So the scary clown knows what he's doing?  Scary.

The film is a kind of Goonies meets Stand By Me meets Carrie, and some other horror films you may have heard of. 

The directing is confidant, way more than competent, and is self aware of its genre, which filmmakers in this area generally need to be.  It's a world of symbols and motifs, of nightmares and minor keys.

As we learned from Vienna Circle, a good way of tackling taboo subjects and sending messages along to the tormented, is to employ the code language of Gothic horror. 

What children most fear, including their own fantasies of vengefully murdering others, get explicit treatment amidst manifestations of disgust and outrage over mistreatment.

In childhood, the local bullies may be of primary concern.  Intelligence learns to zoom out and appreciate the bigger picture.  A 27-year-long time cycle haunts this town.  The evil is at the archetypal level, less than in the individual incarnations.

The stereotype personalities in the making band together as blended hero, to fight their collective projection of pure Evil, whom they eventually find, and corner.  They fight for each other.

The hellmouth they find is worthy of another Buffy and crew.  I respect the cinematographic effects.

There's always a library, full of those musty books, telling texts that at least hint at the sulfuric sepulchral creatures that haunt the netherworld. 

Childhood means taking up the perennial battles against our own deepest fears. 

Horror flicks like this one help us focus and deal with whatever traumas.