THE TURNING (US - 2020) Directed by Floria Sigismondi. Written by Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes. Cast: Mackenzie Davis, Finn Wolfhard, Brooklynn Prince, Joely Richardson, Barbara Marten, Niall Gregg Fulton, Denna Thomsen, Kim Adis. (PG-13, 95 mins) Many of pop culture's most effective and familiar ghost story tropes can be traced back to Henry James' 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, the chilling tale of a prim, proper, and--through as much suggestion as standards of the period would allow--sexually-repressed governess put in charge of two orphaned children in a gothic mansion which may or may not be haunted by the ghosts of the previous governess and the sinister groundskeeper. The story has inspired an untold number of horror novelists and short story writers and has been been adapted for stage, screen, and television dozens of times. The most famous, of course, is Jack Clayton's 1961 classic THE INNOCENTS, with Deborah Kerr as the governess. That was followed by a 1974 TV-movie from DARK SHADOWS creator Dan Curtis and starring Lynn Redgrave; a 1992 version with Patsy Kensit; 1999's Spanish-made PRESENCE OF MIND with Sadie Frost; as a 2000 PBS production with Jodhi May; 2006's IN A DARK PLACE with Leelee Sobieski; and as a 2009 BBC production with a pre-DOWNTON ABBEY Michelle Dockery (and while not a direct adaptation, Alejandro Amenabar's 2001 film THE OTHERS, with Nicole Kidman, owes a tremendous debt to The Turn of the Screw). Not only is James' story always the source of serious chills down the spine, but the governess role is a strong, complex, and multi-layered one for any actress to tackle, so much so that screen legend Kerr often cited her work in THE INNOCENTS as her best performance, and it wasn't even one of six for which she was Oscar-nominated.
The latest film to tackle James' renowned novella is the misbegotten THE TURNING, which moves the story to 1994--with an early shot of a TV showing breaking news of Kurt Cobain's suicide--apparently for no reasons other than fetishized nostalgia and the idea that even The Turn of the Screw needed to be revamped in order to pander to the AMERICAN HORROR STORY/STRANGER THINGSification of today's horror, right down to the presence of IT and STRANGER THINGS co-star Finn Wolfhard as one of the orphaned children. The 1994 setting probably seemed like a wink-and-a-nudge from director Floria Sigismondi, directing her first feature film since 2010's THE RUNAWAYS and who's best known for her music videos for David Bowie, Marilyn Manson (she directed the video for "The Beautiful People"), Tricky, Bjork, Fiona Apple, and The White Stripes, and in more recent years, Pink, Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, and Dua Lipa. Sigismondi clearly has stylistic chops and a good reputation in her field in order to land so many high-profile gigs in the music industry, but THE TURNING just doesn't work. The script by twin horror scribes Chad and Carey W. Hayes (still dining out on the two CONJURINGs, while hoping we forgot they penned $3 Big Lots DVD rack fixtures like the Paris Hilton HOUSE OF WAX, THE REAPING, and WHITEOUT) is content to recycle every hoary horror cliche of the modern era, while attempting to give some contemporary subtext that it introduces in a half-assed fashion and almost instantly abandons. There's enough sexual overtones to James' story that a modern update (or modern-ish, if we consider the grunge-era setting, with songs not from that era but rather, current alt-rock throwbacks like Warpaint, The Kills' Alison Mosshart, and Soccer Mommy) could've been an insightful commentary on #MeToo and #TimesUp, but after laying the groundwork for such a topic, the filmmakers don't do anything with it and instead opt to move on to the next tired jump scare, as if Sigismondi suddenly remembers (or was reminded) that she's contractually obligated to deliver a PG-13 film.
Set for release in February 2019 and shelved for nearly a year until a weekend could be found for a slightly more appropriate January dumping, THE TURNING uses enough of James' source work but also tries to split the difference with the little-remembered 1972 film THE NIGHTCOMERS, a prequel to THE INNOCENTS before the term "prequel" entered the moviegoing lexicon. Freed from the cinematic restraints of just a decade earlier, THE NIGHTCOMERS enjoyed the relatively new freedom of the R rating in its INNOCENTS origin story about the previous governess Miss Jessel (Stephanie Beacham) and her sweaty, sadomasochistic sexcapades with groundskeeper Quint, played by Marlon Brando just before his triumphant GODFATHER comeback. THE NIGHTCOMERS is essentially INNOCENTS fan fiction that erases the mystery and ambiguity of the older film's much-debated ending and again, subtly incorporating those sexual aspects could've taken THE TURNING to some intriguing places. In the governess role, Mackenzie Davis is Kate, a college student who takes a job as a live-in teacher for seven-year-old orphan Flora (THE FLORIDA PROJECT's Brooklynn Prince) at a massive gothic estate in an isolated region of the Pacific Northwest. Devoted and judgmental housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Barbara Marten) is an obvious keeper of dark secrets who insists Flora never leave the grounds, and claims to not know what happened with previous teacher Miss Jessel (Denna Thomsen), or how her mysterious "disappearance" relates to the accidental death of Quint (Niall Greig Fulton). It isn't long before Kate starts hearing strange voices, creaks, and moans in the middle of the night and catches glimpses of faces that look like they might be Miss Jessel and Quint. But instead of leaving, she sticks around. She feels a duty to help young Flora, and while she didn't lose her parents in a tragic car accident like the little girl did, she understands the notion of a rough childhood after her father walked out on her and her psychologically-disturbed mother, who's now in a mental institution. In what's really THE TURNING's sole inspired decision, Kate's mother is played in two brief scenes by Joely Richardson, making her yet another member of the Redgrave acting dynasty to appear in an adaptation of the story: her aunt Lynn Redgrave starred in the aforementioned 1974 TV-movie, her uncle Corin Redgrave appeared in the 2009 BBC version, and her grandfather Michael Redgrave played the cold-hearted uncle who hired Kerr's governess to care for his niece and nephew in THE INNOCENTS.
Complicating matters is the unexpected arrival of Flora's older, teenage brother Miles (Wolfhard), who's been expelled from boarding school after violently attacking a classmate (of course, Mrs. Grose refuses to believe it, since both children are "thoroughbreds"). Miles immediately antagonizes Kate and undermines the bond she's formed with Flora, and she even wakes in the middle of the night to find him standing over her and caressing her. One of the main ideas of James' novella and THE INNOCENTS was the governess' belief that the spirits of Miss Jessel and Quint were attempting to possess the children in order to continue their secret relationship. But it's never really a certainty that these ghosts exist and there's significant evidence that the governess is projecting her own neuroses and psychosexual hang-ups on to the children. Having a teenage, hormonal Miles demonstrate some leering designs on Kate--if indeed he's possessed by Quint--is an example of THE TURNING potentially updating James with contemporary relevance. But every time it even flirts with any story element of that sort, it backs off and takes the safe route, with more rote jump scares, extended dream sequence fake-outs that only seem to be there to pad the run time, a brief sojourn into AMITYVILLE HORROR/ "we need to get out of this house!" territory with the enraged ghost of Quint going on an estate-wide rampage, and finally, the lamest non-ending to a horror movie since THE DEVIL INSIDE sent the audience to a web site to see how things panned out. Attempts at ambiguity can't work when there's no subtlety to the story and no underlying themes on which to build it. THE INNOCENTS remains one of the most terrifying of horror films, and those shots of the ghostly Miss Jessel standing on the lake in the distance are still the stuff of nightmares. By contrast, THE TURNING is a film that can't even be bothered to come up with a cliched twist ending and instead just abruptly peaces out, dumbing down THE INNOCENTS and Henry James into a pointless post-Blumhouse jump-scare machine with a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material. Davis essays her role with convincing anguish and emerges unscathed, as does the very promising Prince, one of the most natural and unaffected child actors in recent years, and who was so memorable as Moonee in THE FLORIDA PROJECT. They--and everyone else--deserve better than THE TURNING.
IT: CHAPTER TWO (US - 2019) Directed by Andy Muschietti. Written by Gary Dauberman. Cast: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgard, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Andy Bean, Jaeden Martell, Wyatt Oleff, Jack Dylan Grazer, Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis, Chosen Jacobs, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Teach Grant, Nicholas Hamilton, Javier Botet, Xavier Dolan, Jess Weixler, Taylor Frey, Molly Atkinson, Joan Gregson, Will Beinbrink, Stephen King, Peter Bogdanovich, Stephen Bogaert, Luke Roessler, Jackson Robert Scott, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Joe Bostick, Megan Charpentier, Juno Rinaldi, Owen Teague, Jake Sim. (R, 169 mins) A blockbuster hit that currently stands as the highest-grossing horror film of all time (by present-day dollars and not by ticket sales or adjustment for inflation), 2017's IT, an adaptation of the first half of Stephen King's gargantuan 1986 novel, ushered in an era of renewed interest in the legendary author's work. This includes the Netflix films GERALD'S GAME and 1922, this year's remake of PET SEMATARY, this fall's DOCTOR SLEEP, a sequel to both King's novel The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film version, which King has spent nearly 40 years criticizing, and several other announced film and TV projects in various states of development or production. Every generation has their genre touchstones, and IT--in many ways a hard-R GOONIES--has become a gateway film for impressionable young horror fans. Every generation's gateway is different, and just as aging purists who cut their teeth on Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi dismissed the blood and guts horror that gained traction in the 1970s, it's easy to for us jaded cynics now in our 40s to take a shit all over whatever it is "the kids" are into and inevitably sound all Old Man Yells at Cloud. I liked IT--it didn't blow me away, but I can see where a 13-year-old might consider it a watershed moment that hopefully leads to further exploration. IT was entertaining but it relied heavily on the now-overused trope of "scary clowns" as well as the crutch of nostalgia, especially by updating the setting of the childhood section of the novel from 1958 to 1989. Of course this also meant recurring invocations of everything 1989, from BATMAN to LETHAL WEAPON 2 to A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5, and a running gag about New Kids on the Block. This retro fetishizing of everything '80s (all that's missing is a John Carpenter-esque synth score) is representative of the move in horror toward The Reference--the AMERICAN HORROR STORY/STRANGER THINGSification of the genre, if you will. And returning director Andy Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman push that even further in IT: CHAPTER TWO.
Running a bladder-challenging 169 minutes--a mere three minutes shorter than THE GODFATHER--IT: CHAPTER TWO is a disappointing sequel. With the first film's characters reconvening in 2016 after 27 years apart, the film is a success in terms of its effective casting choices and finding actors who, for the most part, strongly resemble the younger versions of their characters. When murders begin taking place in Derry 27 years after "It" was defeated, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa), the town librarian and lone member of "The Losers" who never moved away, reaches out to his six childhood friends spread all across the country--Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy), a novelist and screenwriter with a habit of writing bad endings; Richie Tozier (Bill Hader), a popular but hacky stand-up comic who doesn't even write his own material; Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone), still a nervous hypochondriac who works insurance risk assessment and married a woman just like his mother (and played by the same actress, Molly Atkinson); Ben Hanscom (Jay Ryan), now an architect who lost all the weight that made him a target of incessant childhood bullying; Stanley Uris (Andy Bean), who grew up to be an accountant; and Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain), a successful fashion designer stuck in an abusive marriage. The reunion is one short when childhood memories come back to Stanley, who commits suicide rather than face the manifestation of It in Pennywise the clown (Bill Skarsgard). Those youthful traumas are only remembered by Mike, who informs the others that once you leave Derry, the memories slowly fade away. But with "It" rearing its ugly head again and the body count rising, the other Losers begin to remember. Through his research, Mike learns that the only way to defeat It is by performing "The Ritual of Chud," a Native American tribal rite that requires them to find one artifact from their childhood before venturing deep into It's lair underneath Derry.
The camaraderie of the young cast of IT--who also appear here in new scenes--was probably its most successful aspect aside from Skarsgard's wild performance as Pennywise. As in IT, the actor is too often replaced by herky-jerky CGI enhancement that almost makes his very presence pointless. IT: CHAPTER TWO, however, spends much of its length with the adult Losers on various solo quests to obtain their artifacts, during which time they have their own confrontations with the past and run-ins with It. There's also the grown-up bully Henry Bowers (Teach Grant), busted out of a mental institution by It in the form of the decayed corpse of his childhood partner-in-crime Patrick Hockstetter (Owen Teague); a little boy (Luke Roessler) who lives in Bill's childhood home and is a new target of It; and Ben's still-unrequited love for Beverly, and these are just some of the too many subplots that IT: CHAPTER TWO has to juggle while jettisoning key characters like Bill's movie star wife Audra (Jess Weixler) and Beverly's asshole husband Tom (Will Beinbrink), who are quickly introduced and never seen again, and still managing to find time for a jokey Stephen King cameo. The film seems long for the sake of being long, and certainly the interminable artifact quests, which constitute almost the entire second hour, could've been condensed or perhaps would've played better if this were made into the limited cable series that it often seems to be emulating, especially with the extended wrap-up that feels more like a series finale than the ending of a movie.
The MVP standout is Hader, whose grown-up Richie is given a new layer of characterization that could've easily come off as woke pandering but is brought to life with heartfelt empathy by the SNL vet, best known for his comedic skills but someone I can easily see morphing into a versatile dramatic actor of the Micheal Keaton variety. As it is, IT: CHAPTER TWO is the HOBBIT of Stephen King adaptations. For all its bloat and overlength despite dumping huge chunks of the novel, it's a story that could've easily been told in two hours, but its predecessor was such a success that Muschietti was likely given carte blanche to run as long as he wanted. It has its moments, but they're spread out over the nearly three-hour run time. Any experienced horror fans will see the jump scares coming a shot before they do since Muschietti's set-ups are all the same, and Pennywise's now-repetitive antics seemed much scarier when they were aimed at the childhood-era Losers (and nothing here even comes close to the terrifying slide projector scene in the first film). Plus, the endless referencing and shout-outs--to things like THE THING, ALIENS, THE SHINING, STAND BY ME, THE LOST BOYS, and even Hader is forced to utter a groaner in the form of DIE HARD's most iconic line in the final battle with Pennywise--just feels lazy. Right around the point when adult Eddie's frightful run-in with It in the dank, cavernous basement of the Derry pharmacy is punctuated by what might go down as the dumbest and most pointless needle-drop in film history in the form of Juice Newton's 1981 hit "Angel of the Morning," I was pretty much over this chapter of IT.
IT (US - 2017) Directed by Andy Muschietti. Written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman. Cast: Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hamilton, Owen Teague, Jake Sim, Logan Thompson, Jackson Robert Scott, Stephen Bogaert, Stuart Hughes, Steven Williams, Megan Charpentier, Javier Botet. (R, 134 mins) Stephen King's gargantuan 1986 best seller was already turned into an ABC miniseries in 1990 with middling results, and the long-in-the-works big screen adaptation of half of it takes a more successful if still flawed stab at the material. I remember checking It out of the library when I was 13 and barely sleeping for the next week as I devoured over 200 pages per day, reading well into the night. At 69, King is more prolific than ever, even if his current output doesn't carry the same cache as his glory days--he's probably dusting off second-rate stuff he's had stashed away for 30 years--but in 1986, the Stephen King brand was at its ubiquitous zenith. He was cranking out what seemed like at least two books a year, and every other week, it felt like a new King movie adaptation was hitting theaters. The 1990 miniseries did what it could with some of the more graphic horrors depicted on the page, but it's hard not to think that an epic big-screen version of the novel would've been a better move 25 or 30 years ago. IT 2017 began as a project for Cary Fukunaga, best known for directing the first season of TRUE DETECTIVE. He eventually bailed over disagreements during pre-production, with Gary Dauberman (ANNABELLE) reworking Fukunaga and Chase Palmer's script and MAMA director and Guillermo del Toro protege Andy Muschietti at the helm. MAMA showed Muschietti had sufficient genre chops, and IT doesn't disappoint if you're looking for loud, constant jump scares.
But that's often its stumbling block as well. With a running time of 134 minutes--epic by horror standards--IT plays that post-INSIDIOUS/CONJURING jump scare card time and time and time again. As you might expect, it works the first few times but eventually, you'll know when they're coming and they lose more power with each one. The malevolent evil of the novel, personified by nightmarish clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard, who'll be raking in serious cash on the convention circuit for the rest of his life thanks to this movie), seems more focused on the no-longer-novel concept of scary clowns, which of course got a big boost from King's book in the first place but also from cult movies like KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE and Sid Haig's Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie's HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS. Scary clowns have always been a thing, but it's only in the relatively recent era that they've become a pop culture trope. Skarsgard is a flamboyantly terrifying Pennywise when he's allowed to act, but so many of his appearances are so heavily enhanced by CGI and digital trickery that it sometimes minimizes him until he's just part of the scenery, the shaky-cam clown attacks all becoming a bit of a blur.
IT 2017 works best when it's grounded and practical. Muschietti puts forth great effort to make this feel as much like a genuine 1980s horror movie as possible. The period detail of its 1989 setting (updated from the late '50s in King's book) is right: the decor, the cars, the hairstyles, a movie theater showing BATMAN, LETHAL WEAPON 2, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5, but sometimes Muschietti oversells it. There's too many mentions of New Kids on the Block, a rock fight set to Anthrax's "Antisocial" seems too slapsticky, and a DONNIE DARKO-esque Steadicam trip through the junior high school set to The Cult's "Love Removal Machine" in place of Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels" all smack of the kind of lazy referencing that's supposed to be funny simply because it's old and easily-recognized. The ensemble of young actors is extremely well-cast, with MIDNIGHT SPECIAL's Jaeden Lieberher the nominal lead as Bill Denbrough, whose younger brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) was sucked into a sewer drain by It a year earlier. The town of Derry, ME is beset by a string of child disappearances, just the latest in a series of tragedies that befall the town every 27 years. Of course, only the kids--an outcast clique dubbed "The Losers"--figure this out as they're haunted one-by-one by sudden appearances of Pennywise, sometimes as a clown and sometimes as an evil woman or a homeless leper (Javier Botet) on the outskirts of town. And this is when they aren't dealing with psychotic bully Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton, a potential William Zabka of his generation, briefly seen in a similar role in the recent King adaptation THE DARK TOWER), or abusive parents, whether it's hypochondriac Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer) being Munchausen-by-proxy'd by his crazy mother or tomboyish Beverly (Sophia Lillis), whose mother seems to be out of the picture and whose father (Stephen Bogaert) has obviously sexually molested her in the past and possibly the present. It's one of IT 2017's more intriguing elements that the most sympathetic parental figure in the film is police chief Bowers (Stuart Hughes), who knows exactly what kind of monster his son is, intervenes when he's about to shoot a helpless cat, and often turns up as a guardian angel of sorts for The Losers and doesn't hesitate to humiliate his asshole son in front of his stupid buddies. This is one of many notable departures from King's book, where Chief Bowers is depicted as an abusive loathsome racist and anti-Semite largely responsible for turning his son into the person he's becoming.
With the setting and the '80s nostalgia (this really does feel like an evil clown version of THE GOONIES at times), it's hard not to draw comparisons to last year's Netflix hit STRANGER THINGS, especially since both share co-star Finn Wolfhard though IT was already in production when STRANGER THINGS took off. The timing is unfortunate, as the novel It certainly had a hand in influencing the outcast character ensemble of STRANGER THINGS, but it's another example of IT 2017 coming years, if not decades later than it should've. A couple of the young actors--Chosen Jacobs as Mike Hanlon, the only black kid in town, and Wyatt Oleff as Jewish Stanley Uris--get lost in the shuffle with the focus on Bill, Beverly, Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), the overweight bookworm nursing a crush on Beverly, and constantly wisecracking, Coke-bottle specs-wearing nerd Richie (Wolfhard). There's some serious jolts in IT (the slideshow scene is an instant classic) and the '80s atmosphere is very well-handled, but IT leans on easy references a little too aggressively at times, sacrificing its painstaking recreation of 1989 and coming off like 2017's idea of a 1980s movie instead of an actual 1980s movie. Even going well past two hours, it feels a little rushed and with the door obviously being left open for a sequel covering the second half of the book, you can't help but wonder if it would've been smarter to adapt this as a limited series of maybe eight episodes for Netflix, Amazon, or HBO.
