It’s October, which means scary movies are back in season. Personally, I love the classics, like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and the Texas chainsaw massacre. Usually when a scary movie did really well when it came out, its followed up by sequels, or a re-make of the original movie. I’d say the most popular re–make of a horror movie, would be the movie “It”. The original movie came out in 1990 and was almost three and a half hours long. 27 years later, part one of the re-make came out, and was just over two hours, while part two came out two years later and ran almost three hours. So, in total the original was three hours, and the re-make was five hours. As a kid, my little sister and I loved the original movie. It was the first horror movie I ever watched, so when I heard there was a re-make being made, me and my sister got really excited. As soon as it got to the theatres, we went to see it, and we loved it.
If you don’t know the story of IT, seven kids from the fictional town of Derry are brought together to fight an evil, shapeshifting clown named “Pennywise”. This clown kidnaps kids and feeds off of their fear. The seven kids defeat the clown but make a promise that if it ever comes back, so would they. 27 years later, the clown starts taking kids again so they all join back up and kill it for good. But which is better, the original, or the re-make? That’s what I wanted to figure out.
As I mentioned before, the original’s run time was around three hours, while the total of both parts of the re-make adds up to five hours, allowing for more storytelling, and more details from the book. Not only that, but the re-make was also almost 30 years after the original came out, so the cameras and special effects have improved tremendously. Besides that, the re-make felt more realistic. Obviously a shapeshifting clown isn’t realistic no matter what, but the dialogue from the kids feels like it was actually written by high school friends. Not only that, the emotional moments between characters feel much more tense, and really help build the characters’ personalities, which the original doesn’t focus on as much.
I asked my sister, who might be the only person who’s seen the movies more times than me, what she thinks. Here’s what she said. “Which It do you prefer, the original or re- make?” I asked. “The original because there would be no re-make without the original.” While I partially agree, I think the re-make does more justice to the book while having deeper characters which is why I say the re-make is better.
After watching all the it movies, it leaves me wanting more. Perfect for me, a new prequal to the movies is coming out called “Welcome to Derry” which I’ll be reviewing once all the episodes come out, so make sure to check for that!
