Director: Keith Thomas
Cast: Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Michael Greyeyes, Gloria Reuben
Have I Seen it Before: Well, we’ll see, but it has been only a hot minute (see what I did there?) since I saw the original 1984 film, so we’ll see what’s changed up.
Did I Like It: Nope!
You probably want more if you’ve come this far. This remake does manage to improve on a number of deep flaws from the original film. Armstrong and Efron are giving more easily plausible (I’m not going to go as far as to say believable) performance, easily accomplishing the tasks of both behaving as if they were father and daughter, and had ever spoken as humans in the first place.
The special effects are sturdy, if not overwhelming, which is certainly more than can be said for the original, although one has to admit that the only objective difference between the effects here and in the original film is that these effects are only new, and not inarguably better.
The final act is not punctuated with a new mission for Charlie (Armstrong) to expose the evil misdeeds of the people that doomed her parents and damned her out of anything resembling a normal childhood. In the original, the post-truth world we live in can’t help but lead one to wonder how Charlie might expose the truth. Here, it is dutifully ignored.
That will easily be the last nice thing I have to say about the film, and especially the last act. Rainbird and Charlie walk off together in the night, and I can’t even reach into the depths of head canon to make that choice work. Poor Kurtwood Smith very nearly gets the Mark-Hamill-in-The-Force-Awakens deal and may not quantifiably be in the film. Every character—including Charlie—feels like they are barely in the film.
Lora posed the question of whether or not King’s work just doesn’t translate to film well. I think with an IT - Chapter One (2017) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994) that seems an unfair generalization.
But I’m reasonably certain that this King story may eschew any sort of adaptation.