There is no doubt that every person living on the Earth has his or her own fears. Despite the fact that people usually try to avoid such situations and objects that make their blood turn to ice, horror films and thrillers remain extremely popular due to the fact that they allow people to have an adrenaline buzz without taking part in the events that may involve a real harm to their health.
Speaking about this genre, it is important to note that the success of a certain movie is strictly interconnected with the proper choice of the ways to depict characters and show contrasts between them in order to create necessary effect. The particular movie that I would like to discuss is It directed by Wallace twenty-seven years ago. In this movie, such characters as Pennywise, Mike Hanlon, played by two different actors, and Georgie are used in order to create the special mood and demonstrate this unequal struggle between a powerful creature and defenseless children.
Nowadays, there are a lot of people who would say that Pennywise does not look like a creature capable of frightening them out of existence. Despite that, when the given movie appeared, horror films with strangely looking characters were not very common in many countries, and this is why it really worked. Pennywise is one of the forms of It, an ancient malignant demon stealing souls of children. This character appears in many scenes of the movie and its actions help to highlight the force imbalance existing between it and children; looking like a clown, Pennywise is able to attract children who love everything bright.
Nevertheless, the appearance of the clown is deceptive as he then kills children to become even stronger. Georgie is the character who became one of the first victims of the demon – the latter asked him to come nearer in order to get a beautiful balloon and this is all that he needed to do to kill this naïve boy. This scene definitely demonstrates that the demon has not chosen a worthy adversary. Injustice of Pennywise and his willingness to do harm to those who are already naked to injury makes him follow Mike who is an elder brother of Georgie and frighten the boy in order to become stronger due to the negative emotions, grief, and deadly terror that he feels.
Speaking about Mike and his outstanding features, it is necessary to say that this character is quite brave; more than that, he is able to see things in a more realistic light. Due to that, he does not react to provocations of Pennywise showing him the ghost of his brother Georgie telling Mike that he lives a happy life after being stolen by the clown. To me, it seems that these three characters are able to tell the entire story written by Stephen King, the story where Pennywise acts as a satanic host and Georgie presents an innocent victim whose image is used to test Mike’s strength of mind (Simpson 81). In general, analyzing the characters, it is necessary to denote that both appearance and behavior are used in order to create the contrast and, therefore, make viewers fear and hate Pennywise who makes his manipulations even more sophisticated throughout the movie.
In the end, I suppose that the discussed characters remain the most important for the given movie as their interaction and unequal withstanding can definitely make viewers share the feelings of these frightened children struggling against the incarnation of their strongest fears.
Work Cited
Simpson, Paul. A Brief Guide to Stephen King. Hachette UK, 2014.