Time ravages everything eventually, even doorstop-size horror novels like Stephen King’s It, but it wasn’t until the newest teaser for the book’s upcoming film adaptation that the source material really showed its age. The book tells the story of two encounters between a group of residents of Derry, Maine, and “It,” an interdimensional being that feeds on fear: once as children and once as adults. Figuring out how to film it today is a math problem as much as anything: The book was published in 1986, its modern-day section takes place in 1984 and 1985, and the childhood section is about 30 years earlier, in 1957 and 1958. So the kids, 10 in 1957, would be 70 today—not really in prime fighting-interdimensional-evil shape. And yet to the extent It has a place in our collective unconsciousness besides the whole terrifying clowns thing, it’s Stephen King’s 1950s novel, or at least the one that’s not The Body/Stand By Me.
That means director Andrés Muschietti and screenwriters Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Garry Dauberman had three unpalatable options: Maintain the book’s 1950s/1980s dichotomy (expensive!); maintain the book’s present-day/30 years ago dichotomy (different from the book!); or holler, “Let’s just do it and be legends, man,” and set it in 1957 and 2017, with more of a Bucket List vibe. As the teaser makes clear, Muschietti and company chose the middle path, setting the flashback portions of It in the Spielbergian 1980s while leaving the door open for a second film set in the present day.
Which means the new adaptation, a coming-of-age story set in the 1980s, looks a lot like Netflix’s Stranger Things, not least because Finn Wolfhard stars in both the new movie and the show. The trailer lingers on a scene of Wolfhard and his group of friends (including fellow Stephen King/Steven Spielberg mashup alum Jaeden Lieberher, fresh off Midnight Special) deciding whether to explore the town’s sewer system. It doesn’t seem like it’s a pivotal moment in the film, but it’s definitely a pivotal moment in feeling like you’re watching Stranger Things, which seems to be the point. Of course, Stranger Things was itself dedicated to feeling like you were watching a Stephen King adaptation as directed by Spielberg, and the pop culture ouroborus just keeps on chewing. Has it finally eaten its way up to a vital organ, freeing us once and for all from reboots, remakes, and homages? Audiences will find out on Sept. 8.
