IT: Chapter One (2017) Rated R
Directed by: Andy Muschietti Production Company: Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema
Starring Bill Skarsgård, Jaeden Martell, Finn Wolfhard, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff
A group of misfit teenagers must band together to defeat a terrifying evil that is preying on their town’s children.
Opening Thoughts
What are you afraid of?
Arachnophobia (fear of spiders), claustrophobia (fear of small spaces), glossophobia (fear of public speaking), acrophobia (fear of heights), and trypanophobia (fear of needles or injections) are just a few of the common fears out there in this fallen world we live in. I myself am scared of heights, rodents, and those freaking giant frostbite spiders in Skyrim (not even kidding, I have ignored whole caves and left quests undone because a bunch of pixels make me want to pee my pants. And don’t even get me started on the Subnautica reaper leviathans.)
As children, our fears tend to be more abstract. We’re scared of the boogeyman, the thing in the closet, the thing under the bed. As we get older, the fears start to have more clearly defined faces: the bullies at school, being rejected by our crushes, not being able to answer when called on in class. And when we become adults, the fears become even more concrete: losing a job, the car’s making a noise, a family member is sick and we don’t know if they’re going to get better.
When something scares us, the little almond-sized part of our brain, the amygdala, is what makes us jump, sometimes before we’re even aware of what actually scared us in the first place. Then the brain dumps adrenaline and cortisol into our bloodstream, kicking our body into survival mode as we prepare to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Eventually the fear passes and depending on the nature and the depth of the fear we either brush it off and laugh about it, or we’re left feeling like we’ve been hit by a truck. What’s so interesting about fear is that it often comes not while we are in an active danger situation, but rather, when we are physically fine but we’re afraid of what could happen. We only need to believe that we’re in danger to evoke a fear response, which happens every single time we watch a scary movie. So why on earth would we want to submit ourselves to such an experience? Because watching scary movies or reading a scary story can help us face our fears in a safe environment, and it gives us hope that we can overcome what we fear. It also gives us a greater viewpoint of the eternal battle of good versus evil.
I don’t normally watch a ton of horror movies, but I do love a good suspenseful story with high stakes that makes me care about the characters and their struggles. And while I would absolutely not recommend it for everyone (check out the IMDb content guide if you’re curious), I believe that IT is one of those stories, and that it has a lot to teach us about the nature of fear and what happens when we face it.
Read on for what God showed me in IT!
SPOILERS for IT Chapter One here!
The movie opens in October of 1988, where Derry teen Bill Denbrough is home sick in bed. He makes his younger brother Georgie a paper boat to play with, and sends Georgie out in the rain to sail it in the gutters. Georgie is then attacked and taken by a strange clown-faced creature in a sewer drain. The following June, Bill and his friends Eddie, Richie, and Stan are leaving school for the summer, and have run-ins with the local bully, Henry Bowers. Henry attacks a new boy at the school, Ben, who is injured but manages to escape with the help of Bill and the others. The boys take Ben downtown to the pharmacy to get supplies to treat his wounds, where they meet Beverly, who helps them. The group is completed when they meet a seventh kid, Mike, and rescue him from Henry Bowers and his friends. Bill and the rest finally stand together against Henry to protect Mike, throwing rocks at him and his friends until they run away.
The group continues to bond as time passes. Ben shares with the group a project he has been working on regarding the violent history of their town, Derry, and how child abductions and murder rates are higher than almost anywhere else, especially every twenty-seven years. The newly formed “Losers Club” share about how each of them has had a frightening experience with the clown or some form of him that summer. They decide to try and destroy the entity they call “IT” before it can harm anyone else. Using Ben’s research, they enter a “haunted” house on Neibolt Street to find IT and are all attacked. They wound IT, who has taken on its clown form known as Pennywise, but Ben and Eddie are injured and the group retreats. Everyone except Bill and Bev decide hunting Pennywise has become too dangerous and the group fractures.
Pennywise abducts Beverly from her home after she has a violent confrontation with her abusive father, and Bill rallies the rest of the group to go and search for her in the sewers beneath the Neibolt house. Henry follows them and attacks them, but they fight him off and continue. The group finds Beverly floating in the air, hypnotized by IT’s “deadlights,” and Ben brings her back with a kiss.
Meanwhile, Bill separates from the group to search for Georgie, whom he still hopes might somehow be alive. Pennywise appears in the guise of Georgie, but Bill sees past the illusion and attacks Pennywise. Pennywise starts to drag Bill away, saying he’ll let the others leave unharmed if they let him keep Bill, but the rest of the group begins attacking Pennywise, which takes a variety of forms, trying to use each Loser’s personal fear to come against them. Eventually, with all of them working together, the Losers overcome IT, wounding it so badly it drops into a deep sewer, apparently dead.
Later, outside of the sewers, Bill asks the other Losers to promise him that if IT isn’t dead, that they’ll all return with him to fight IT if it ever comes back. The Losers seal their oath by slicing their palms and holding hands, swearing to return someday.
So What Did God Show Me?
-One of the first things we learn about each member of the Losers Club is that they each have their own individual fears, ones that are personalized to their identities and lives. Bill is afraid of other kids going missing like his brother Georgie. Eddie is afraid of getting sick. Beverly is afraid of going through puberty. Each of those fears was born out of some event or influence in their lives, and the enemy does the same thing with us. He will use things that people said to us or things that happened to us to seed fear in our lives. While some of those fears are real and rational and a healthy response to traumatic events, some fears can also hold us back and paralyze us from being the people God created us to be. In Bill’s case, his fear of other children going missing was born out of losing his brother Georgie. Thinking he failed to protect his brother has not only left him drowning in guilt, but obsessed with the belief that Georgie is still alive somewhere. This causes Bill to take risks by putting himself and his friends in dangerous situations, like going down into dark, unmapped, unsafe sewers to search for him, and eventually leaving themselves open to the same monster that took Georgie.
When we don’t recognize our fears and face them in a healthy way, they can lead to unsafe behaviors and habits like addictions. If your fears are grounded in an unsafe situation or in a way that is causing you to respond to them in an unhealthy way, I encourage you to acknowledge this and seek help. I assure you there is no shame in seeking help, whether it’s a pastor or church for spiritual matters, a mental health worker for mental/emotional matters, or law enforcement for physically unsafe situations.
-A very basic fear that I think everyone on the planet has had to deal with at some time or another is the fear of being seen for who we really are. Every single one of the Losers has been told there is something wrong with them. They’re freaks, weirdos, outcasts that will never be accepted. Bill stutters. Ben is overweight. Eddie is a germaphobe. Richie is hyper and a motormouth. Beverly has a false reputation that she sleeps around. Mike suffers attacks because of his skin color and Stan for his Jewish faith. But it’s not until the seven of them come together that they start to be known for their strengths instead of their “shortcomings.” When the kids are together they all accept each other just as they are, completely and unconditionally. Sure, Richie teases, but he doesn’t mean any harm and the others know this and that it’s just part of who he is.
Being vulnerable and allowing others to see you is one of the biggest kinds of bravery, because we risk being rejected. But I believe that God puts the lonely (and the “losers”) in families (Psalm 68:6). I mean, look at the Bible, it’s filled with losers! Like that popular meme that’s been floating around the internet forever: “Noah was a drunk. Abraham was too old. Jacob was a liar. Moses was a stutterer (like Bill!!). Gideon was afraid. Rahab was a prostitute. David was an adulterer. Peter denied Christ. Paul was a murderer.” I myself am an overweight ADHD distracted daydreamer. There is a place for everyone in God’s Losers Club, and like Eddie demonstrated on his cast, God is very good at turning “Losers” into Lovers.
-Another trick the enemy uses, often to great success, is using fear to isolate us. Think about it. Nobody wants to talk about the things that they’re afraid of, it’s embarrassing, it makes us look stupid, especially if the thing we’re afraid of is something that wouldn’t necessarily scare someone else. “You’re afraid of that? Seriously? Why?” For instance, when Richie is constantly teasing Eddie about being afraid of germs and getting sick. In the movie, each of the kids experiences a fear event that terrifies them, not just because it’s a personalized scare, but because no one else can see what they see. So not only do the kids have to deal with a thing that frightens them, but they think that they’re going crazy because they’re the only ones that can see it. So it’s a multi-pronged attack: the kids are scared, the kids don’t trust their own judgment, and the kids feel alone and helpless against the attack.
At one point in the film, Beverly suffers a terrifying attack where blood erupts out of her sink, soaking the entire bathroom in red. Her father can’t see it, so she begins to doubt her own sanity. But it’s not until she risks ridicule and rejection by showing the other Losers her bathroom that her fears are validated, because they can see the blood. And not only do they see it, but they all pitch in and help her clean the entire bathroom so that Beverly doesn’t have to live with a blood-soaked bathroom that only she can see.
I know I’ve struggled a lot with feeling isolated. Not just in fear, but guilt, shame, or plain old anxiety at not being understood or affirmed that my fear is legitimate. The enemy will use fear first to isolate us, then to control us, and finally, to consume us unless we learn how to break the cycle. The first step is realizing that hiding your fear only feeds it and gives it more dominion over you.
I was thinking about this scene in the bathroom, and it really reminded me of when we come to God and confess our sins. Now, I want to make it abundantly clear that Beverly hadn’t sinned, she hadn’t done anything at all. The bathroom was something that happened to her through no fault of her own. But the process, bringing something hidden that you’re scared and ashamed of to someone you trust, is very similar. And then God, like the boys, says, “Thank you for telling me that. That was a hard thing to do, and I love that you trusted me with your scary thing. Now let’s get it cleaned up.”
God never meant for us to face our fears alone. It’s true that we are never alone and we are never outside of his help, but he also provides people and communities for us to draw from as well. God saw man in the Garden and stated that it wasn’t good for him to be alone (Genesis 2:18). You don’t have to be alone in your fear either. No matter if your fear is something more abstract like video game spiders or heights, or whether it’s a real fear of losing a loved one or financial difficulties, you don’t have to carry it alone. Because that’s exactly what the enemy wants you to do.
-Once the Losers found their family, they were able to move past the labels that other people have put on them and utilize their true “superpowers” to pull together and fight against IT. Fear separated them, vulnerability and openness drew them together, and their loyalty and trust in each other cemented their bond. Bill the stutterer is the group’s natural leader. Ben is the group’s organized historian, tracking IT’s attacks in Derry’s history. Eddie the hypochondriac becomes the group’s fanny-pack-wearing field medic. Everyone had something specific to bring to the table.
I believe we cannot beat fear alone. I mean, we can try, we can make decisions to act against what scares us. But without people we can trust who encourage us and help us along the way, well, facing our fears is much more difficult, not to mention we leave ourselves open to further attack when we don’t have anyone watching our backs.
-There comes a time in everyone’s life where eventually we are going to have to face our fears. Fears aren’t always dealt with on the first, or the fourth, or the fourteenth time. Remember, the enemy knows our personal fears and has no qualms about dialing them up to eleven and using them at the absolute worst times. But an important part of facing our fears is believing that those fears can be fought and overcome. Belief plays a critical role in the Losers’ battle against IT. The Losers are able to see IT for the monster that it really is, rather than just assuming, like the rest of Derry, that the kids are missing because they’re running away or being abducted. This is because the Losers are all children, and children naturally have much larger capacities for imagination and belief, believing in things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as really real until we grow up and “know better.” So in the IT book, Eddie is able to walk up to IT and squirt Pennywise with his asthma inhaler, because Eddie believes that it’s filled with “battery acid” and can therefore hurt IT. And since Eddie believes this, the “acid” burns IT and makes it retreat. In the movie, Bill is able to shoot IT with an empty bolt pistol and still wound IT because he believes he can hurt it.
In the Bible, Jesus cites the importance of having childlike faith in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Mark 10:15) and that with belief anything is possible (Mark 9:23). When it comes to facing our fears, belief is one of the greatest weapons in our arsenal. So hold onto the belief that God is for us, and that he is in control when situations feel out of control. Remember, like Bob the Tomato once so famously said, “God is bigger than the boogeyman.” And like the Losers eventually discover, the reason the enemy tries so hard to frighten us is because (I believe) he’s scared of us and what we can do with God.
-At one point, IT kidnaps Beverly and takes her into the sewers below Derry, and the Losers must rally to find her and save her. The abduction comes right in the middle of a point in the story where the Losers have let their own personal fears drive them apart, and the group is fractured. But when they come together to find Beverly, they let their fears unite them by relying on each other to face them, instead of alone.
Later, in the process of rescuing her, Bill is captured and held by Pennywise, and the clown gives the rest of the Losers the option to leave unharmed, if they leave Bill to him. Bill himself, still feeling guilty for leading his friends into danger, screams at them to go and leave him behind, to save themselves. But the Losers refuse to do so, and one by one, must face their own personal fears once more. But this time, they are upheld by each other in fighting against their fears, and so are able to wound IT so badly it retreats and they think they’ve killed it.
I’ve often found in my own life it is much easier to fight for someone else and help them stand against their fears than it is to face your own. Stories are full of protagonists facing terrifying situations out of love for another. Sam carrying Frodo up Mt. Doom. Meg fighting for Charles Wallace against IT. The Pevensies defending Narnia against the White Witch. Eleven defending the Stranger Things gang against Vecna. And, of course, Jesus, going through the most horrifying and painful experience imaginable, for us. What is it that causes us to step into the fray for another? To help someone even when it affects our own comfort and safety? Even when the person themself is telling us to go?
Love. Love is the catalyst that gives us the ability to choose to do the brave thing even when we’re scared, because the only thing worse than facing our greatest fears is losing the people we love to theirs. Jesus’s sacrifice is the genesis of every story of faith over fear in existence. He gave us the example. He loved us so much, he simply was not willing to leave us to the enemy. And sure, Jesus is God, but he was absolutely scared when he faced the cross and all that his sacrifice entailed (Mark 14:33-34). But he did it anyway. Because his love for us was bigger. When what we love is more important than what we fear, that’s how we beat it.
-At the end of the movie, the Losers believe that they’ve conquered IT, but Bill isn’t so sure. So he asks the Losers to make a solemn vow that if IT isn’t dead, and if IT comes back to take more children, that they’ll return and help him fight. One by one, the Losers slice their palms and join hands, each swearing to come back. Later, the sequel movie shows the Losers holding to their blood oath and returning to Derry as adults to abide by their promise and finish IT for good.
Why would they do this? The Losers grow up to live successful lives, far from the place they grew up. They had no real reason to return except for a promise they made on a summer afternoon at age thirteen. I don’t even remember half the things I did when I was thirteen. But Derry adults don’t see IT like the Losers do, and the town sweeps its missing children under a rug. The Losers come because if they don’t take a stand against evil, who will? So they choose danger once more, when everything and everyone else is choosing to ignore it.
Covenant promises, especially ones where blood is involved, are some of the most solemn in the whole Bible. Scripture goes to great lengths to show us the solemnity of a promise and understanding the power of an unbreakable vow. One of the most famous examples is found in Genesis 15:9-17, the “Suzerainty Treaty” between God and Abraham, where Abraham split animals in half, and then fell asleep as God carried a flaming torch between the halves of the bloody animal corpses, taking the full weight of the promise on himself. In Exodus 24:8 Moses spattered blood on the Israelites confirming the covenant God made with them. And in Matthew 26:28, at the Last Supper, Jesus raised the cup that represents his blood that would be shed, saying “This is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people.” But in light of the Losers’ promise here, the most powerful example that came to mind was of the prophetic verse in Isaiah 49:16, where God says, “See, I have written your name on the palm of my hand.” This foretells of Jesus’ nail wounds on the palms of his hands, put there out of his great love for you. And those marks are still there, they didn’t just scab over and heal. In John 20:25-27, after his resurrection, Jesus invites Thomas to touch them. We’ll see them someday, the mark of his eternal promise and love for us.
Closing Thoughts
Closing Thoughts:
So as I was thinking and praying about what to write for this blog post, I was thinking back over my life, and of all the scary things that have happened to me, and what the scariest things were. There’s been loads of things that scared me: nightmares, haunted houses, movie jump scares, those dang frostbite spiders and reaper leviathans. Stage fright. Being bullied. 9/11. Losing my parents. As I’ve gotten older, so have my fears, and I’ll be honest and say some of my current worries are growing old alone, dying alone, being forgotten.
But after thinking about it, I’d have to narrow it down to two times that I have been the MOST scared. The first time was about ten years ago when I was spending a weekend in a friend’s camping shack on a tiny island on Lake Winnipesaukee. The shack turned out to be infested with spiders the size of the palm of my hand, and I spent most of my time putting cups or bowls over them and then sliding a piece of paper under them and throwing them outside. But the first night I was there, I remember being up in the bedroom, surrounded in darkness so black I couldn’t tell the difference with my eyes open or shut, and my mind began to…go places. What if spiders crawled over me while I was sleeping? What if there were other animals, like bears, on the island? What if there was a serial killer on the island?? (See how the enemy escalated that?) I mean, the whole thing really was a setup worthy of a horror movie. I was by myself on a tiny island with no cell service and a kayak to get back and forth to the mainland and only a Swiss Army knife to defend myself. And even though absolutely nothing had happened to me (I hadn’t seen or heard or even felt anything,) I cried out to God, terrified. I begged him to protect me from the boogeymen that I felt were closing in any second. Well, immediately I got the most beautiful picture in my head of God coming next to me on the bed, slipping his large arm around me and drawing me close. I swear I could practically feel his arm around me for real. Then the vision showed me angels at the head and foot and either side of the bed, even one above us, standing guard, and their wings snapping out to form an impenetrable canopy over us. I went right to sleep after that.
The second time was a bit different. Back in 2007 I was struggling with a lot of things in my life, and when I was at a Christian music festival called Soulfest, I found myself standing in front of a tent offering prayer for anyone who wanted it. I walked past it several times, and then I kept walking past it. But every time I passed by, I’d walk slower. Eventually I stopped and stared, and as I was doing so, a kid manning the table called out, “Hey, you can come in if you want…it’s not scary, it’s just prayer!” I finally decided to hitch up my big girl panties and go in for prayer. The prayer I received there was personal and powerful and because of it I was able to talk to the people who prayed for me about my struggles. They ended up praying into it, going into spiritual battle to fight for me. Long story short, because I was able to step out in my fear and face it, I ended up joining that church and I’m still there nineteen years later. Sometimes being vulnerable and allowing yourself to be seen is the biggest scary there is…but it also makes the victory that much bigger.
So when you come up against the enemy’s fear attacks in your lives, I’m not going to tell you it won’t be scary. I’m not going to tell you it won’t hurt you, or that you’ll escape unscathed. But I do want to ask you to think about what happens when you actually face your fear…and come out on the other side of it? Because I have. You survive. You make it. You’re still here. And you’re a different person because of it, changed in a way you never would be if you had stayed where you were in the first place.
In closing, I want to address why I chose a straight-up horror movie to blog about this month, and I’d like to quote two people. The first is Joe Hill’s (Stephen King’s son) introduction to his father’s book ‘Salem’s Lot: “On the face of it, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to spend your evenings reading a creepfest like this, the sort of book which is sure to make it hard to sleep and to give you bad dreams when you finally do. A book like ’Salem’s Lot scares you by forcing you to imagine fighting for your life against an uncanny evil. But it also comforts you by reassuring you that your life is worth fighting for, that it is a thing of immense value.”
The second is GK Chesterton, from his essay “The Red Angel,” in the 1909 collection Tremendous Trifles: “Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.” And if any of you are thinking, um, Sarah, IT is way more scary than a fairy tale, I would direct you to some of the original versions of the Grimm fairy tales…let’s say it’s not just a clever name.
Fears are real. And it’s stories like these show us how they can be faced.
What are you afraid of?
Reading:
“Don’t panic. I’m with you. There’s no need to fear for I’m your God. I’ll give you strength. I’ll help you. I’ll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you. Count on it: Everyone who had it in for you will end up out in the cold—real losers. Those who worked against you will end up empty-handed— nothing to show for their lives. When you go out looking for your old adversaries you won’t find them— Not a trace of your old enemies, not even a memory. That’s right. Because I, your God, have a firm grip on you and I’m not letting go. I’m telling you, ‘Don’t panic. I’m right here to help you.’” – Isaiah 41:10-13, The Message
Challenge:
Honestly look your fears in the face. Acknowledge that they are real and valid. Then reassess those fears with the knowledge that the God of the Universe, your Father who loves you, is holding your hand, has a firm grip on you, and will never, ever, make you face those fears alone. Ask him for people to stand against your fears with you. And again, if your fears are grounded in an unsafe situation, seek help, whether it’s a pastor or church for spiritual matters, a mental health worker for mental/emotional matters, or law enforcement for physically unsafe situations. Doing the brave thing while you’re scared is the biggest kind of courage.
Sign Up For the Forged In Film Newsletter
Links I Like
Links I like:
- Stephen King website
- ‘It’ Screenwriter Gary Dauberman on How His Christian Faith Influences His Horror Films
- Engaging Stephen King’s It with the Gospel
- Pennywise the Clown, Stephen King, and Jesus
- From Losers to Lovers: How It: Chapter One Takes Us to Church
- JJ Johnson Reads: My Top Five Stephen King Books Ranked
- Plugged In’s review of It (2017)
- VeggieTales: God is Bigger Than the Boogeyman
- GK Chesterton “Tremendous Trifles” (Specifically the essay XVII, “The Red Angel.” Read this. Seriously, read this. This is an INCREDIBLE essay on fear and fighting it. I’d have quoted the whole dang thing if I could have.)
- CS Lewis: “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”
Sources
1- IT splash – https://jasonsmovieblog.com/2017/09/19/it-2017-review/
2 – IT poster – https://www.ebay.com/itm/392276719077
3 – Losers Club – https://coyotepr.uk/films/who-are-the-losers-club/attachment/it-welcome-to-the-losers-club/
4 – Loser/Lover – https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/it-movie-explained-director-andres-muschietti-on-sequel-easter-eggs
5 – Bev bathroom – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1396484/mediaviewer/rm3390925568/?ref_=ttmi_mi_122_1
6 – Bill captive – (from film)
7 – Blood Oath – (from film)
