Weekend Watch: Thoughts On IT And Horror Movies

Over the summer, my roommates and I hosted Monday night dinners for our friends, which consisted of the cheapest food possible to make, mid-priced desserts (because if you’re going to splurge, it better be on good tasting desserts) and wide-ranging conversations. There was one conversation in particular that has stuck with me throughout the summer and into the school year: horror movies are morally wrong.

One of my friends held this belief and complained about those of us who were watching “Cabin in the Woods“. During dinner, I asked him why he thought horror movies were wrong.

“Their only goal is to instill fear in the viewer,” said my friend.

After asking him if he had ever seen a horror movie before, my friend said that he hadn’t. I told him that what he believed was based off of hearsay. Horror movies are not made to only scare you, at least not decent ones.  If my friend wanted to know what a horror movie was actually about, he’d have to watch one—something he refused (and still refuses) to do.

While I was watching “IT Chapter Two,” that conversation with my friend kept echoing in my head because it simply isn’t true: the purpose of horror movies are not just to scare you, and I think that the “IT“ series is a good example of that. There has to be something else to “IT“ and the sequel than just scares, especially because “IT“ is the highest grossing horror film in history.

Like the first installment, “It Chapter Two“ is also directed by Andrés Muschietti. Though, in my opinion, chapter two is not as strong as its predecessor, the film is still decent and worth watching because it’s a continuation of the great story that began in “It Chapter One.“

Of course, everyone knows that the movies are about a killer clown, but there is so much more to the movies than a clown who can shape shift into children’s greatest fears and eat them. Maybe I’m reading into the movies a little too much because I’ve read the book and know more than what the movies show, but I don’t think that I am. At the heart of “IT“—the book and the movie—the story is about childhood trauma, how it shapes you and the importance of conquering fear.

That’s what’s so beautiful about a horror movie when it’s done well: it pretends to be one thing so that it can be another. Like Pennywise the clown, “IT” acts as a typical horror movie but really is trying to send a message to all of its viewers.

That message, though it can vary from time to time, is about conquering fear. Of course, that doesn’t make much sense for a horror movie, especially because the goal is to scare the audience (somewhere my friend who thinks horror movies are morally wrong is shouting in agreement).

Aristotle believed that tragedy was an important genre of theater and that it was healthy for the viewer to watch tragic plays. He believed that the plays brought about a type of catharsis to those in attendance. Viewers were able to experience the tragic topics in a safe place where they could process what was happening and handle it in small amounts, therefore allowing them to deal with their own tragic experiences in life (this, of course, includes a high amount of paraphrasing and Aristotle’s theory is more complex than what I’ve written).

I believe horror movies also act as a form of catharsis to those who struggle with fear. We live in a society today where fear and anxiety are worse than ever before, and knowing how to handle those things is becoming more and more crucial.

Both films in the “IT“ franchise desire to talk about fear and teach us that facing our fears is the only way to rid ourselves of what keeps us from growing in life—that and what happens in our childhood shapes who we become as adults.

For Eddie, he’s been sickly since childhood and his mother is overprotective. As an adult, Eddie ends up marrying someone who treats him just like his mom did (a more pronounced part in the novel and not in the movie). Beverly ends up dating someone who is just as abusive as her father. Bill hasn’t been able to get over his brother’s death and ends up becoming a writer as a way of processing the events that happened in Derry (though he is not aware of this).

This is the same for every character in the movie; all of the kids end up acting in certain ways so that they are able to cope with their childhood trauma, though they are unaware of it. One of the fascinating parts of both the movie and the book is that the farther away from Derry you are, the harder it is to remember the events that happened there.

Derry acts as a personification of childhood itself. The kids grew up and left Derry, only returning upon realizing the effect that the town and the monster has had on their adult lives.

Even now, me being a 22-year-old student, I struggle to remember certain aspects and events of my childhood. I seem to remember mainly the good, forgetting the bad, but that’s not necessarily a fault. That said, it seems to me that the hardest aspects of someone’s childhood shape us in ways that we don’t fully realize or understand.

Reading “IT“ and watching the movies has made me realize the importance of confronting the certain aspects of my childhood that have had an impact on who I am today. I love Stephen King’s words on his dedication page for the novel “IT”. 

King writes: “Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.”

Fiction is the truth in the lie; fiction allows us to explore ourselves in the guise of a fictive world. It is there, in the made-up stories that we tell, that we really are able to discover who we are and who we want to be. Fiction is a journey into ourselves.

No matter the genre, whether horror or action or comedy, fiction has the power to change us for the better if we let it. The challenge is finding good tales that can do that. And “IT”, the movies and the book, can show us the importance of facing our fears, if we allow them to.