It, The Florida Project

Come back Shakes the Clown, all is forgiven

Andy Muschitelli's It is an utterly dull horror movie. Derived from a lesser Stephen King novel, there are snatches of better King novels (and movies) scattered throughout: teenage humiliation and body shaming (Carrie), teenage camaraderie (Stand by Me), shut-ins going bonkers (Misery, The Shining), horrific crimes from the past being reenacted in the present (Salem's Lot, The Shining) and the like. Bill Skarsgard (above) and Sophia Lillis have nice moments, but most of the male juveniles are anonymous. The film is overlong by at least forty five minutes because the exposition is so belabored. The cinematography by Chung-hoon Chung has an appropriately cruddy palette, but Muschietti's camera setups are rarely provocative or interesting.

Sean Baker's The Florida Project boasts a totally different palette (soft pinks, purples and teals) appropriate for its Orlando settings and is well edited, paced and shot. His cast is even younger than the one in It, but give far more coherent and spontaneous performances. They enact the plot of The Florida Project amidst the welfare motels, tacky tourist shops and waffle huts that line the periphery of Disney's magic Kingdom. The kids engage in mischief in these slightly surreal surroundings which Baker shows dwarfing them; befitting members of an underclass that Baker portrays as trapped by economic and social circumstances.

Willem Dafoe abides in The Florida Project

Putting up with their shenanigans is Willem Dafoe who portrays the manager of the motel that houses the main child character, Moonee. Moonee's mom is portrayed as a young, tattooed floozy who is engaged in an array of nefarious activities. Dafoe's character is housemother and saint, especially when angrily escorting a potential child molester from the premises. Dafoe is snug in his role, but Bria Vinaite, as the mom, throws the movie off with a braying performance. The close up of Vinaite's howling mouth after she has been arrested and Moonee has escaped custody is a payoff shot that fails to payoff.

Baker's camera then follows Moonee and a cohort as they run pell-mell into Disney World for a sequence that does provide an emotional and visual catharsis. Baker gets a lot of mileage in the film out of lyrical shots of children running through kudzu and tarmac. After twenty years of incredibly varied work, he has risen to the ranks of promising newcomers. (3/11/18)