Review: IT Chapter Two

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