IT: Chapter Two: "You'll float two!"

I have always been a fan of Steven King ever since I saw the IT miniseries on TV when I was a kid. I’ve read a lot of his stuff but I hate to admit that I have never read IT. The miniseries scared me as a kid but I never really liked how the story played out. I was really excited for the reboot film in 2017 and when I was watching it, I kept wondering when they were going to become adults, it never occurred to me that there would be a part 2. But now IT Chapter Two is finally here and I can say without any hesitation that I sure did “witness the end of IT” like the tagline promised.

The movie takes place 27 years after the end of the first film. Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa), the only one of the Losers to stay in Derry, has been keeping track of Pennywise’s (Bill Skarsgård) in case of his return. Sure enough Pennywise does return and Mike contacts the rest of the Losers, Bill (James McAvoy), Beverly (Jessica Chastain), Richie (Bill Hader), Ben (Jay Ryan), Eddie (James Ransone), and Stan (Andy Bean), asking them to come back and fulfill the promise they made 27 years ago to come back if the creature returned. They have all completely forgotten about their time in Derry due to some mental cloud that develops once someone leaves the town. Reluctantly they all return and proceed to confront and attempt to finally kill Pennywise.

I was hoping to love the movie because I really enjoyed the first one but I think this movie was just passable. I know that this movie is clearly the second part of the story but even being the case, I want a movie to be able to stand on its own and not force the viewer to watch something else prior. What I loved about the first one was how the characters all interacted. The actors were all able to riff off each other and they brought a lot of life to all the characters. With chapter 2 they did absolutely no character development. They showed a quick scene of everyone away from Derry but as soon as they got back to the town, they took on the personalities of their younger selves as if they had zero growth over 27 years. Beverly was abused by her husband and has these bruises on her arm but literally none of the characters notice it or even ask her about it. If you didn’t see the first one you kind of just see these adults doing stuff and acting like children. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the cast had chemistry like the child actors, which they didn’t. Each of the actors were fine on their own but as a group I didn’t really feel any attachment to them like I had with the group in the first movie.

Also, in the first movie Pennywise was genuinely creepy but in chapter two he was just kind of there. He walked around kind of terrorizing the Losers but he wasn’t really scary. I think it was that he didn’t really have any good lines or scenes where he was disturbing. In the first one he was eerily calm and even when they were beating him up, he had some sort of composure that made him terrifying. In this film he was just this crazed monster that would snap at the drop of a hat and do scary things. He was just there to jump out and scare you when the camera panned away or if the view of him was obscured.

I think a lot of these issues came from the fact that while the first film was co written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman, the second was only written by Dauberman. He is responsible for two of the shittiest horror movies I’ve seen recently “The Nun” and “Annabelle Comes Home.” Both films are boring with aimless monsters terrorizing cardboard protagonists for no real reason and with no aim. As I said I haven’t read IT so I can’t say for sure that some of the bad dialogue and plot points weren’t just pulled from the novel. But there is a scene before they confront Pennywise when Beverly gives Eddie a piece of metal fence and he asks, “can this kill him?” and Beverly responds with something like “This can kill monsters if you believe it can.” It felt like some shitty line from a children’s TV movie and even Chastain delivered it like she thought the line was a joke. The movie is filled with these weird dialogue exchanges and characters doing stupid stuff that doesn’t feel natural. Come to think of it the entire movie just felt like a Children’s movie aside from the jump scares; a movie about the power of friendship and how best friends always win. Bleh.

Before I shit on the film some more, I will say that I did love the Stephen King Cameo and the running joke with Bill’s character being unable to write a satisfying ending, which is a frequent criticism of King. Now back to your regularly scheduled hate fest.

I absolutely hated the film structure. Each of the Losers had to obtain some token that was significant to them. So they each go to places that held meaning during their childhood then you’d get a flashback of them as children and in the flashback Pennywise would be there then it would come back to their present selves in the same location and Pennywise would be there again; repeat 6 times. I feel like it lengthened an already long movie and didn’t really do too much to further the story.

All that being said I guess it was an okay movie. It told the story and got to the conclusion but did it in a roundabout and not very entertaining way. There didn’t seem to be as much love and care put into the film as the first one. This one felt more like a necessity rather than a project that had people that loved the source material. If you saw the first one you might as well go see chapter two. But otherwise skip this.

TL: DR Highly anticipated movie kind of sucks. Sad. 5 floating red balloons out of 10.