There are a lot of people around me who never watch horror movies, some don't like the bloody scenes, some can't stand the sudden shock, and they don't like the atmosphere of horror movies and the plot that leads to nightmares. But I have to say that a good horror film is not just filled with blood plasma and grimace. It is a science to arouse the audience's fear, so I decided to talk about this horror film today.
Derry, like many small American towns, is unremarkable. Billy was in bed with his brother Georgie by his side. Billy made a paper boat for his brother and painted it with wax so it wouldn't sink easily in the water. It was raining heavily outside, and the water formed a creek on the lower edge of the sidewalk for boats to float on. Georgie put on a yellow raincoat and sailed with his boat, but never came back.
The first time the Joker appeared on the sewer, Georgie was afraid of the dark, so he was instinctively afraid of the black hole in the sewer. If it weren't for the boat falling in, he wouldn't have gotten there, but that's how it happened.
Billy has a stutter, Richie wears glasses, Eddie takes all kinds of medicines all day, and Stanley is Jewish. The four of them were often bullied by their senior classmates at school, and when they saw the three bullies headed by Bowers, they would all detour. It was far more than the four of them who were bullied at school. The girl Beverly was blocked by other female classmates in the toilet and poured dirty water. And Ben, who is new to the town, can be bullied just because he is fat.
Although being bullied by seniors, this is not the most feared thing for several children. Moreover, even Bowers, who took the lead in bullying them, had his own fears. When school was over, Bowers wanted to teach a lesson to these "wasteful" Bowers, and his fierce expression became dull in an instant .
Ben of Ipoh Library found that every 27 years there was a mass disappearance of people in the town, and most of the missing people were children. The so-called disappearance rather than death, in popular terms, means that no one is alive, and no one is dead. In the past so many years, where did those children go, why are they still unsolved cases, and what is the truth?
Billy came home and tried to demonstrate to his father the possibility of his brother being flushed down the sewers when he went missing and eventually out of town, but his father yelled at him, telling him that his brother was dead and that he had to accept it. It seems that at home, only he is obsessed with the disappearance of his younger brother, why can his parents accept it so quickly.
On the other hand, Ben, coming home from the library, ran into three more senior bullies, and Bowers actually ripped off his clothes and carved his name on his stomach with a knife. The act frightened his two companions too, Ben screamed in pain, while Bowers smiled cruelly. It's hard to believe that a sixteen or seventeen-year-old can do such a brutal thing to another ten-year-old. What's even more unbelievable is that a car happened to be driving by at the time. The two adults in the car clearly saw what Bowers was doing, but they drove the car away indifferently.
Ben, who was struggling to escape, met Billy and others who came to the sewer with his friends to try to find his younger brother. When the boys bought gauze at the pharmacy, they found that the money was not enough, and they got help from Beverly. Something seems to bring them close to each other, so they form the "Junk Club" to solve the mystery of a group of children missing every 27 years in the town.
Through Ben, they know that those children are most likely to be abducted by "IT", an IT in the shape of a clown whose favorite thing is to devour children's fears . If being bullied by seniors makes them a little scared and disgusted at most, what are children's real fears?
When Beverly bought the sanitary napkin at the drugstore, she seemed hesitant, stared at it for a long time before picking it up, and hurriedly put it in her arms for fear of being seen. This series of behavior seems to indicate that she is a girl who has just had her period and is not used to dealing with this aspect. But she has another side. In order to help the Billys who have no money to buy the necessary supplies, she goes to seduce the cashier of the drugstore. When she pretended to be flirting with the "greasy middle-aged man", she was so experienced. And at the beginning of the film, the fact that she was doused with garbage by other girls seems to imply that she has an ambiguous relationship with many male classmates. On the one hand, she is ashamed to face the sexual maturity she is experiencing, and on the other hand, she keeps showing her sexual charm in front of the opposite sex, which makes Beverly present a serious sense of conflict.
How did this conflict come about? Beverly returned home and was stopped by her father, who demanded to see what she had bought. When she found out that it was a sanitary napkin, her father asked her with an ambiguous expression: "Answer me, are you my baby?" Beverly said numbly "Yes". This is not an ordinary father-daughter relationship. Whether it's a father touching her hair or asking her in her ear, it's like a lustful man facing his prey, not a father facing his daughter.
Hair touched by his father, Beverly rushed to the bathroom and cut it. Because I can't vent my anger to my father, I can only attack myself in this way. So on the one hand, she gained her father's "love" because she was a girl, and on the other hand, she knew that the love her father gave her was not paternal love, which made her hate her female identity. Beverly's fear is this! The drain of the bathroom washbasin and the gushing blood are the embodiment of her fear of menstruation, a symbol of female sexual maturity.
Billy's parents seemed to accept the disappearance of their youngest son all at once, as cold as the couple who drove past Ben without saving him . So Billy's fear was related to his brother, and also to the cold water. Eddie is not sick at all. In order to control him, his mother keeps him by her side and gives him various pills every day to make him believe that he has a disease. So Eddie's fear is a leper, he is afraid that one day he will suffer from an incurable disease and die alone because of isolation. Stanley worked hard to learn Judaism, but his father was always dissatisfied, so he mocked him. So he saw a nun with a twisted face, representing his fear of being rejected by the religion he was bound to by birth.
The parents of the children in the whole town, those adults, are the biggest source of fear for the children. Why does the indifference of adults form a source of fear in children? Because children have instinctual needs to establish an emotional connection with their parents, if these needs are ignored and unresponsive, children have to grudgingly adapt. When faced with situations that make them feel dangerous, overwhelmed children should have sought out stronger parental protection. However, because of their previous avoidance and indifference, their parents knew that relying on them was unsatisfactory. At this time, they could not cope well with those dangerous situations and did not know how to deal with them. These dangerous situations can cause them more and more stress, eventually turning into a psychological black hole that sucks their joy away.
Compared to Billy and the others, Beverly's situation is even worse. Her father, who was supposed to love her, has become a source of harm. Although there is no very direct presentation of her father's sexual assault on her, there is a scene that tells the audience the truth in a subtle way. Her father found a poem sent by Beverly's male classmate hidden in his underwear, prevented her from going out, and threw her to the ground. It can be seen that Beverly wears a pair of thick trousers under the thin cloth dress in summer. What girl wears this in summer unless she wants to protect herself this way.
Meanwhile, the father of the school bully Bowers is his nightmare. His father, a police officer, often belittled and abused him, and he was also beaten by his father. Remember at the beginning of the movie, why did Bowers, who originally planned to bully Billy and the others, look sluggish and suddenly stop? Not because of his conscience, but because he saw his father who was on duty not far away. Similarly, when Beverly faced her father asking what she bought, she also had a numb expression. Because of these kids, they're stuck in a dilemma that keeps them stuck. On the one hand they want to be close to their parents, to be loved and cared for. On the other hand, getting close means great harm, so they will be afraid of their parents and have a desire to escape. When this experience is repeated all the time, the child becomes confused. Therefore, dull expressions are most likely to appear on the faces of such children.
The feeling of safety is the most basic. If we lose this feeling, we lose the ability to regulate our emotions, control our emotions, and think about our current environment. Anything that triggers our mood swings can create a ripple effect. It was only a small pebble that was thrown into the lake, but it kept stirring in our hearts in circles, and it was impossible to calm down for a long time. The way to gain a sense of security is to have a safe base.
What if the adults in this small town abandoned these children and no one provided them with a safe base? Attachment theory has a concept of "earned security", which means that when the parents who originally provided the security base failed in their duties, we still hope to build a security base for ourselves through acquired efforts and gain a sense of security. For these children, the "Waste Club" is their psychological safety base. The same situation makes them understand each other better and become each other's support.
Together they explore the mysteries of the clowns in the town, and they also swim and play together. They can clumsily but collectively confront the budding sexual urges of adolescence. Because of his father's relationship, Beverly, who was attacked and disgusted with his female identity, also saw the beauty of sex in getting along with these boys. While the first attempt to explore the Joker's abandoned house failed, some people didn't want to venture further. But after learning of Beverly's disappearance, they finally have the courage to rally again, face their fears, and fight the Joker.
Attachment theory argues that marriage has the potential to improve our previously poor attachment patterns toward secure attachment. Friendship can, I think. Especially in adolescence, the emotional support of peers can hopefully provide the same sense of security as our parents and help us heal the trauma of our early years.
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