IT Chapter Two (2019): Written
by Gary Dauberman, directed by Andy Muschietti. Starring:
Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan,
James Ransone, Andy Bean, and Bill Skarsgard. Running Time: 170
minutes. Based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King.
Rating: 2.5/4
**spoiler alert for the end of the
movie**
Part of what may well allow the first
IT movie to endure the test of time as a good movie was the
decision to chronogically split King's massive, sprawling,
detail-packed story. Everything with the characters as adults and
the bizarro, cosmic world-building got punted to the future so as to
focus more tightly on a tale about outcast children in the town of
Derry, Maine. It was the right choice; the first film might not be
on par with The Shining, but it very much stands on its own as
an engaging, schlocky, horror bash, carried by an absurdly amazing
cast of child actors (including my dude, Finn Wolfhard). This tight
focus- driven, in part, by its tight budget- helped the movie avoid
getting bogged down in the more esoteric stuff from its source
material.
Now, though, the sequel is here,
meaning it's time for both the adult drama, and the big, otherwordly
explanation for what the hell IT even is, what it's doing
here, and what can be done about, er, it. And the answers
are.....not very satisfying, except perhaps to the most diehard
Kingheads, if even that. There is plenty of good stuff in this
movie, and some moments that are truly excellent, but ultimately it's
impossible not feel the very drawn-out runtime by the time the
throroughly unspecactular end of Pennywise the Clown comes about.
In line with the book, the adults
versions of the characters, after besting Pennywise as children, all
move away from Derry and start there own lives, eventually forgetting
nearly everything that happened to them as kids (it's suggested that
this is part of Pennywise's strange, and rather ill-defined,
powerset). One of them, though- Mike- stayed behind, and 27 years
later he summons his friends back to the town when mysterious,
gruesome murders start up again, convinced that this is their chance
to finish Pennywise once and for all.
For the most part, the adult cast
works well as adult versions of the children we fell in love with in
the first film. Their reinstroductions to each other after years
apart is easily one of the movie's better scenes. The standout is
Bill Hader (adult Finn Wolfhard), a caustic, stand-up comedian who,
while plenty funny throughout the film, also gets perhaps the most
emotionally impactful character arc and dramatic scenes. Sadly, they
can't hold much of a candle to the child cast, and this disparity is
only reinforced through a series of flashbacks scattered throughout
the film that almost feel like a collection of deleted scenes from
the first film, as if the director had been denied permission to make
a Director's Cut and decided to squeeze it into the sequel instead.
The flashbacks are part of why the
film feels so padded, but a bigger reason for that is that the whole
middle act is devoted to a split-up-the-group treasure hunt, where
each person in the group has to find some sort of "artifact"
from the past for the mythic ritual that, according to Mike, is the
only way to kill the creature. This ritual in and of itself is a
rather embarassing bit of Native American appropriation, but the film
rushes through it so fast it feels like the crew was aware of this
and decided to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.
Now, theoretically, these divided
sequences could have worked as a series of reinforcing montages, with
all of the stories culminating at once, Cloud Atlas style, but
alas, we are forced to sit through them one after the other, and by
the third segment the rhythm is already tired out. This draggy part
could theoretically have been salvaged by a bonanza final act, but
unfortunately it seems that, along with a blockbuster-sized budget
($185 million, to be exact), the filmmakers took their cues from the
lesser examples of modern superhero works. The "grand
conclusion" is, as a result, a bloated smorgasborg of
unconvincing CGI and action beats that culminate, very awkwardly, in
Pennywise being beaten by the movie's version of a Twitter pile-on.
In a movie about overcoming and dealing with the effects of childhood
trauma, most especially bullying, it's unavoidably tone-deaf.
That this is how the good guys win is
especially disappointing given how insanely good bill Skarsgard is as
Pennywise. This sort of role that, already having an iconic
performance from a great actor to its name, usually ends up as a
death trap for the careers of anyone unfortunate to come along later
and try and duplicate the magic (see; every Joker post-Heath Ledger).
Skarsgard, however, skillfully avoids any pitfalls that would have
made his Pennywise nought but a shallow imitation of Tim Curry's
now-legendary absurdist take from the original miniseries. He has
his own voice, his own mannerisms, his own methods for getting into
his victim's heads. The scariest beats in both movies are
overwhelmingly those with Pennywise as just a weird clown, not any of
the huge, stunted monsters he turns into by the end. Skarsgard has
some great sequences in this movie, but there are few and far between
compared to the first, yet another reason why the sequel suffers in
comparison.
I am usually a defender for movies
going longer and deeper and not holding themselves to an arbitrary
two-hour runtime, but even I have my limits. This movie isn't bad,
but it is a watch-checker, and that is especially fatal when it comes
to horror. If you are a King completist, this is worth seeing
eventually, but not worth rushing into a theater for.
-Noah Franc
