IT

...wasn't what I expected.

A relevant confession: I read Stephen King’s IT and Needful Things back-to-back one hot summer weekend when I was thirteen, circa 1992. Growing up in the upper midwest, the evenings stayed bright until 9pm or later. After dinner, I sat with my current book on the bed and read until it was too dark to see. Then I flipped on the overhead light and read until 2 or 3 a.m. every night.

All summer long, I devoured cheap Harlequin novels and the rather demure, pirate-themed bodice rippers my grandmother had in a box under her coffee table. I read the triad masters of horror: Koontz, King, and Straub, along with the more usual fare for kids my age—all in equal measure. No genre was safe.

You see, in my house growing up, if I could read it, I was allowed to read it. No books were off limits once I had the “talk”—you know the one. Boy, was it eye-opening. I never looked at colander the same way ever again. Thanks, Mom.

That weekend, I sat up to the wee hours of the morning, just hoping Georgie was still alive and pondering Leland Gaunt’s every move.

I was most enthralled with King’s brick-like novels, and still consider him one of my favorite authors. My writing mentor once said that early exposure could possibly explain where I got my dark sense of humor. I tend to agree.

But it was with heavy trepidation I approached the film version of IT (Chapters 1 & 2, but for ease of narration, we will just refer to them as a single very long film since they are but two halves of one whole) for my Blockbuster class. My cousin lent me her copy and it sat on my dresser until the very last possible minute. With a deadline fast approaching, I threw it into the DVD player last night and hit play.

I wasn’t worried about it not living up to the novel nostalgia from my teens. Not concerned because the newest incarnation of Pennywise looks like a cartoon compared to the more realistic Tim Curry version. I wasn’t bothered by 12 year old kids swearing like sailors and throwing sexual innuendos around like parade confetti (as per some of the online complaints I read).

I was sweating bullets because of a pesky little thing called OCD. Long story short, due to some complications from long COVID, I developed serious physiologically-based OCD. Something isn’t quite right in the fear center of my brain anymore. It over-reacts and sends me into debilitating, body-wide tailspins over nothing. Something as simple as a racing heart from a jump-scare cascades into panicked chaos and I’m useless for a few days. In the five years I’ve lived with OCD, I’ve learned what to avoid to stay functional. Horror was logically dropped onto that list early on.

Simply, I just don’t do well with fear anymore. So I made myself a deal. I would watch the highest grossing horror film of all time and if it was too much, I’d walk away. IT wasn’t worth poking a stick into my mental health.

Funny enough, once the movie got going, I found the opposite was true.

The movie bored me. Like deep, yawn-inducing boredom. Not because the acting wasn’t great (it was), not because the characters were poorly cast (they weren’t), and not because the CGI was bad (it wasn’t).

This may be the funniest line in the whole movie. Image via Tumblr

But because the jump scares that are part and parcel for a horror film fell totally flat on me. The blood and gore? Meh.

And I figured out why. The crap my brain makes up on the daily is worse than any horror film I could watch. IT is a great movie. I can see why it grossed that much money back in 2017, I can see why people rewatch it and talk about it still. I can see why it’s a Halloween-time film staple.

I’m just not a good audience for it anymore.

Which kinda makes me sad. Like I’ve unwittingly lost a bit of my childhood, stolen by OCD, as so many other things have been.

I plan on reading the book next year and see what happens. Will I love it still? I hope so.