10 Movie Remakes Better Than The Original
4. IT: Chapter One
There's a lot of things to love about the original IT miniseries. Tim Curry's version of Pennywise made him a horror icon, haunting the minds of both children and adults for decades as the killer clown everyone was scared of. What everyone happily forgets (or misremembers) though, is how !*$% boring so much of the three-hour film is. Everyone remembers Pennywise popping up in the showers, but nobody remembers the long stretches of terrible adult drama in the second half, or when the clown turns into a big Lovecraftian spider-monster at the end.
In part because it chose to split the book up and focus purely on the main cast as kids, the recent remake is inherently far tighter. The cast themselves are also excellent, bouncing off each other like actual kids would, both afraid and overwhelmed at the situation yet still teasing and putting on a confident front. Unlike the original, there's far more heart to the remake because of this; you really feel for this group even before a clown turns up to try and eat them, relying on each other as a family unit because their real, flesh-and-blood relatives are completely screwed up.
Also, it helps that it's freaking terrifying. Bill Skarsgard's take on Pennywise is an entirely different beast from Curry's, while the film itself has the R-Rated bite to back up its bark. Throw in inventive sequences that capitalise on the clown's ability to manipulate the kids' worst fears, and you're left with a horror that's scary in part because of how unpredictable it is.
It was a smash hit for a reason, and hopefully Chapter 2 will capture the same magic that made the first so special.
[JB]