Based on Steven King’s 1986 novel, Andy Muschietti’s 2017 It film was an immediate success. With its eerie take on Pennywise and its stellar child cast, It quickly became the highest-grossing horror film of all time. However, It was an atypical horror film. Rather than primarily focusing on the villainous Pennywise the Clown, It brought its protagonists to the forefront. And just like Steven King intended, the Losers Club stole the show.
It tells the tale of a fateful summer in Derry Maine as Pennywise — a balloon-toting, demonic clown — reappeared on a child-murdering rampage, and the only thing standing in the monster’s way was a group of social misfits known as the Losers Club. Ultimately, the group succeeded in banishing Pennywise for another twenty-seven years (the usual length of his killing hiatus). How the losers won the day, though, was what made the film such a success, and it all came back to why they were called the Losers Club.
Although it’s a horror film, many people have also labeled It as a coming-of-age story. When the film began, the seven members of the Losers Club were social rejects — bullied, cast off or belittled in a personal way. Bill’s guilt about Georgie’s death consumed him; Beverly’s father regularly abused her; bullies repeatedly harassed Ben over his weight; Mike was an outsider for multiple reasons; Eddie’s mother made him into a terrified germaphobe; Stanley was uptight and overly logical, and Richie spent too much time trying to be cooler than he was.
All of those things made the children prime targets for Pennywise. Separated and downtrodden, Pennywise took advantage of their fears by manifesting in ways that linked to each’s child’s personal terrors. In the end, they all had to realize that Pennywise became powerless when no one was afraid of him. However, getting there was a difficult journey, and it involved the name of their group — the Losers Club.
As it turns out, no one dubbed them with such a classless — although catchy — name. Sure, almost everyone called them losers, but the group of misfits named themselves the Losers Club. In the film, the first mention of the group’s name came after the other six rescued Mike from Bowers’ gang with a rock fight. They welcomed him into their group of rejects, and that was the first step toward their accepting their less-than-appealing social status. Although, accepting that status and the word “loser” ultimately gave them power.
Together, they established a sense of belonging and comradery in the fact that everyone else pushed them away. It didn’t matter that they were rejects because no one needed to change themselves in order to fit in. So, as they embraced each other, they found confidence, which gave each of them the ability to confront and defeat their own, personal demons. That, in turn, gave the group the collective power to defeat Pennywise. Thus, creating and identifying with the “Losers Club” moniker was a textbook personification of how each character found self-acceptance during the film.
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