Blog 64: New Series

After the success of the Trevor Diaries, which nobody read, I thought I'd do a new series of horror movie reviews. After watching the original Nightmare on Elm Street recently I've had a craving to watch as many "classic" horror films as I can. And I thought I'd do some reviews, just to try my hand at reviewing.

At the each of the reviews I'm going to give the films a score based on 6 categories: the amount of times it made me jump, how scary the monster is, how good the story is, how good the filming is, how good the acting is and how good the music is.

For example, for the film Alien, it made me jump 5 times, 7/10 for the monster, 6/10 for filming, 7/10 for the story, 8/10 for the acting and 5/10 for the music, giving it a total of 38.

So what follows is the first of those reviews, a review of the film IT, based on the novel by Stephen King.

IT is the story of some children who have to fight and kill something, known as "It" which has been picking off neighborhood kids around their area. However, it is set when the children are grown up, and after another child dies in mysterious circumstances, one of the ex-kids rings the others and tells them to come meet him, and they all act quite shocked as they remember the events from before, which is given to us in small tasty doses as flashbacks. The confusing bit is that there's a random clown running around, which somehow becomes a massive spider with a glowing six pack. And how on earth you forget a clown running around killing everyone until someone rings you in the future is beyond me.

The story line was a little weak to be honest. I feel stupid for criticizing Stephen King's story, but just firing silver on the off chance that it'll work the same as on a werewolf is a MASSIVELY rubbish idea, and when it WORKS you begin to wonder about originality of the story. Also, they use a standard slingshot to fire the silver into the clown's head, which seems weird cos his head comes all open and light comes through, which is just not right.

Then again, if it didn't work, then there'd have been 7 dead kids about halfway through the movie.

OH WAIT, that would have been good, because maybe THEN it wouldn't have dragged on for another TWO HOURS whilst watching people eat at a restaurant.

I'm still wondering now how on earth the asthmatic kid gets battery acid in a little squirter both times they face the monster.

My fave bit was when the children are discussing the disappearances and the spookiness that seems to be going down. One boy suggests perhaps the clown is a crazy man who likes dressing as a clown and killing people. The leader child, (who annoys me immensely, because he's on never ending story as well) instantly shouts down that poor child (who had a pretty reasonable suggestion) with "NO IT'S DEFINATELY A MONSTER". Fair enough.

Stephen King's IT gets 0 for making me jump, 4 for the monster, 5 for filming, 3 for the story, 1 for the acting (it was terrible) 6 for the music which was quite creepy and that gives it a total of 19.

Next time is a review of the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE :O watch this space.