IT Chapter Two is a mixed bag, but IT’s the good kind of mixed bag, the type that offers more than enough to appreciate to elevate IT over ITs shortcomings. The casting between both films was spot on. The adults are believably the counterparts of the adolescent cast of the first film and seamlessly take over the roles, a fact made more apparent by having both sets of actors inhabit the same film. Like the first film, I don’t think IT is a very scary film, but there is a lot of creepy imagery. The prominence of the loud noises for jump scares (stop this Hollywood, please) is lessened and silence is used a little more effectively than in the first film, but the imagery would be far more unsettling without bombastic auditory cues; a film to reference on this point is Silent Hill, which allows its monstrosities to exist in a way that lends them an eerie elegance, something the nightmarish creatures in IT could really benefit from.
The biggest problem any adaptation of IT faces is the mammoth scope of the source material which runs 1,138 pages because much context is lost in adaptation. IT Chapter Two was far more faithful to the source material than its predecessor and yet did the source material more of a disservice. Chapter Two is a case of the ambition of being faithful to the source material hindering the final product. I wonder if Warner Bros gives Muschietti that massive 6+hour Director’s Cut – that will make IT one gigantic film – what structural problems in the narrative will be solved. A lot of people have bemoaned IT Chapter Two’s length – even the original got some slack for its runtime – though I suspect in the case of IT more problems will be fixed by making it longer, not shorter.
IT as a whole is a difficult film to truly judge. If you’re a King fan you’re judging the whole product in terms of adaptation and it succeeds in that regard. If you’re judging it as a horror film, I imagine the extended run-time and certain executions will lessen it as a horror film. IT is a horror story, but it’s also a character-driven drama sprinkled liberally with genuine humour, which too is faithful to the source material, though Chapter Two less so than the first film. The novel is also filled with lore, offering a rich history of Derry and how ITs presence affects the townspeople in a horrible way, something which cannot easily be shoved into a film; in addition, the lore of IT, of the macroverse, and ITs mortal enemy, The Turtle (Maturin to Tower Junkies), is also something that simply would never play to general audiences. Considering all the challenges with adapting the novel to the screen, I give IT Chapter Two a lower rating than I gave IT – four stars – a solid three stars.
A spoiler warning plopped menacingly on the table is now in effect as I break down the film so if you haven't seen the film yet
PLUG TIME: If you got the reference above then you must be a South Park fan. I just completed my rewatch of all 22 seasons of South Park. I’ll be ranking all 297 episodes to celebrate the coming 300th episode. If you’re a fan, check it out and yell at me if you disagree. Season 23 premieres September 25th. The 300th episode should air on October 9th. First set of rankings will come out Friday, September 13th.
The Visuals
The strongest aspect of this film is the visuals. There are some amazing scenes in this film, a great blend of practical effects, atmosphere, set design, and computer animation, the latter of which seems to be the most divisive right now. Many people are anti-CGI these days and I am too, to a degree. I don’t think something is automatically lessened with CGI though its usage is often a product of laziness or a lack of ingenuity. IT Chapter Two has some stellar CGI, used more effectively than in the original.
In this film, the style of the CGI is what makes much of it so good. Sure it doesn’t look real, but why would you want it too? Much of the CGI in IT Chapter Two resembles stop motion/claymation, giving the movements of the nightmarish creatures a certain degree of tangibility while also lending them a true sense of being ethereal, not really there. The animation during Bill’s vision was also excellently done and one of the most visually effective aspects of the film. You see this especially during the Chinese restaurant scene with the fortune cookies and when all those tiny hands come out of the sewer and crawl up Bill’s arm. There is such care in most of the CGI effects, attention to detail, to lighting, to how they play off the environment and the actors that really blurs the line between nightmare in reality in a way I think every horror film aims to accomplish yet fails in the execution.
The mirror maze sequence is expertly done in terms of visuals. At its climax when the kid is trapped between Bill and Pennywise, the lights flicker, and I think they filmed two different takes of this – one with Pennywise and one without – because when intermittent black flickers in, Pennywise seems to vanish entirely as if he is the blackness itself, yet the two humans are still visible. There are so many deft touches throughout the film like this. There are some gorgeous transitions, unique shots, and slick camera movements and editing that really lend a sense of disorientation and macabre wonder to the events of the film.
The daylight scenes featuring Pennywise were highlights to me. Without being obscured with shadows and dimly lit rooms and corridors, the costume, makeup, and physical performance of Bill Skarsgard shines. When he’s atop the Paul Bunyan statue with the sky as the backdrop, his costume both contrasts sharply with it while simultaneously blending with it – the white face and ashy suit blend so he seems almost translucent, while the red accents and hair, along with the yellow eyes, are enhanced by the neutral palette and lend the form of Pennywise the presence of something that doesn’t belong in our world.
The Muddled Structure
The central failing of IT Chapter Two is the narrative structure. Due to the fact we’re following six different characters, like the first film, we get six different encounters with Pennywise (at minimum) plus an additional encounter that occurred when they were kids that would’ve occurred during the time period of the original film. This make the narrative progression feel repetitive – Loser + Pennywise = scary thing; rinse and repeat – it’s also true to the source material where chapters are devoted to specific encounters that works in a book without transferring to the screen in an engaging way. The creatures during these scenes are also a little too similar to each other. This movie really could’ve used Mike’s encounter with the giant bird (a highlight of the novel) to spice up the imagery. The scenes and their narrative weight are perfectly fine though they dole out little in the way of chills or scares. The most effective scene in terms of Pennywise encounters was when he eats the little girl and how Pennywise lured her in by disarming her defenses through engaging other emotions other than abject fear, aiming for more nuanced fears like being different or ugly. It makes Pennywise not just a monster, but a savvy manipulator.
When I said the movie should’ve been longer earlier, I meant it specifically in terms of pacing and characterization. I think many sequences in the film, notably when the characters separate to claim their tokens for the Ritual of Chud, could’ve been more effective if there was more meat to the story to break them up and make them more meaningful. The first film had the bonding of the Losers Club, issues with parents, and their feud with Henry Bowers as ongoing plots besides Pennywise that really helps the film establish an easy to digest pattern, balancing characterization, scares, and plot progression. Sure there was spooky clown stuff, but there were also lots of great non-spooky-clown moments, like Beverly hiding the New Kids on the Block poster so the kids wouldn’t rip on Ben…there wasn’t a word spoken yet there was so much said – Chapter Two is missing these touches.
Chapter Two is missing two key elements to the adult portion of the novel, Bev’s abusive husband Tom, who comes to Derry to kill her after she escapes him, and Bill’s wife Audra; Pennywise manipulates Tom’s wrath to capture Audra. Not only do these plot elements add real world stakes (fighting Pennywise is a battle that is divorced from reality), it gives the adult Losers more things to worry about than simply Pennywise. Henry Bowers is in the film yet despite the solid performance (the actor truly seemed like he was in a perpetual state of adolescent rage) he is utterly ineffective. In the novel, Henry Bower’s role in the narrative is to stab Mike Hamlin and take him out of play and rendering The Losers Club weaker as they descend into the sewers. But all he does is stab Eddie in the cheek and attack Mike without doing any harm before he’s killed by Richie. His character accomplished nothing. The biggest aspect of losing these plotlines from the film is what it does for Pennywise. He is afraid of The Losers Club. And they weakened him significantly. This is why he manipulates Henry to kill them and, when that fails to get the job done, he manipulates Tom to take Audra, effectively weakening the resolve of Bill, the essential leader of The Losers Club. When these pieces are absent, there is little left for our adult Losers to do or be concerned with except dealing with Pennywise. And that’s a real shame. Nothing in their adult lives remotely impacts their time on screen in Chapter Two. A big misstep.
Lastly, there really isn’t a story to this second film besides stopping Pennywise. I don’t care if a movie has a plot, but when characterization is severely lacking, you miss a nice and progressive plot. Not enough roads are taken to demonstrate how the characters have or haven’t changed and what new experiences in their lives are motivating them to risk their lives. Because of this lack of attention to characterization, this movie is missing that human quality that makes the story of IT work and its characters so relatable.
Small Scale Storytelling
Fans of the book know how mammoth the novel is. There are a multitude of pages devoted to fleshing out the history of Derry. They touched on how tragedies and atrocities happen in concurrence with ITs awakenings in the original film without representing to the true scope. There are centuries of events described, some of which offer some of the book’s high points such as The Black Spot, which was adapted to be Mike’s parents burning alive instead of townsfolk, under the influence of IT, burning down a negro bar and killing something like 50 people they trapped inside. On top of that, there is the lore about ITs endless war against The Turtle, effectively ITs counterpart on the side of good, and the macroverse, that all ties into the Ritual of Chud. Of course, this is the kind of thing that simply cannot be done in a film. A 10 episode limited run series, where they can interweave the kids/adults storylines so they’re happening concurrently, allowing them to delve into the history and bring more life to Derry and its inhabitants? Sure. Not films. They require too much narrative structure and there are far too many restrictions when it comes to runtime. It’s a key aspect to the setting though, barely hinted at in the first film, utterly missing from this one.
In the book, when Pennywise is defeated, a devastating storm is conjured up and sweeps through Derry and causes a great deal of destruction because the town was as much a part of IT as IT was part of the town, and represents the true death of IT and ITs influence on the town of Derry. It also presents one last obstacle to overcome as they try to escape the sewers and I think we all know what happens then.
None of these details needed to be in the film to make it work all that extra flesh to the world really makes Derry, Derry. I don’t think a few extra tidbits of information and character would’ve hurt anything. Cutting out Henry Bowers could’ve given them room for it.
Perfect Casting, Imperfect Characters
The biggest sin this adaptation commits in terms of content is the characters themselves. While the cast seamlessly inhabits the same characters as the child actors and their chemistry is undeniable (that really helps the film), the characterization is pretty weak. Much like how Mike was shortchanged in the first film, none of the adult characters, save for Richie, get anything solid to work with.
Bill is still dealing with the spectre of Georgie’s death with the kid Dean and his wife plays no role; his biggest wrinkle is lamenting no one likes the endings to his books, and outside returning feelings for Bev, there isn’t much there.
The lifetime of abusive men is a non-factor for Beverly, depriving Chastain of something meaty to work with and her fear not just of Pennywise. Without her husband Tom, who is eaten by Pennywise in the novel, being in Derry, she doesn’t get a clean slate at the end: Tom is still out there and she’s still married to him. Beverly not being free of him casts closing shot of her and Ben together with far less joy.
Eddie is mostly used for comedy, including that weirdly toned scuffle with Bowers and the comedic encounter in the pharmacy basement, which is fine, but there’s nothing really to him. In the novel he’s very interesting as he understands he married his mother (played by the same actress here who played his mother, which is clever, but easily missable), much like Bev basically married her father…but it’s sad for Bev, and embarrassing for Eddie. He gets his act of bravery, but that’s it.
Ben is boiled down to his feelings for Beverly, and while it’s well-handled in his expressions, there is little screen time between them and they tease Bill/Bev for most of the runtime. We don’t get much depth to his lingering feelings for Beverly. Did he forget her? Has he been pining over her for 27 years? Has he never loved anyone else? We know he’s successful now, but little else. He gets the girl in the end, but that rings pretty hollow because his feelings aren’t given the same weight in this film as the previous film. There isn’t that same catharsis in their realized love in this as in the novel.
Mike is the only character who has things to deal with and gets more depth than he did as a child, between the fact he remembers everything, his obsession with IT, and breaking free of his self-imposed existence as a lonely lighthouse keeper, when we see him pack his things at the end, there is an authentic sense of closure for Mike, and a hope for a truly new beginning the other characters lack.
Jay Ryan, who played Ben in Chapter Two, did a good job with what he had to work with. But he’s the only casting that didn’t work for me. He’s too attractive, like a hot and sexy mess of Ethan Hawke and Josh Brolin with that trademark Matt Dillon greasiness. He’s seemingly super rich, he’s super hot, and it really makes his shyness and apprehension about expressing his love to Bev unbelievable. I understand that all the Losers somewhat regress to their child selves upon returning to Derry yet this didn’t work for me. I can’t believe that an attractive and rich man wouldn’t have developed some strong interpersonal skills when dealing with the opposite sex over a course of 20+ years. John Ritter in the 1990 miniseries was more believable to have those attributes. My dream pick would’ve been Jonah Hill (even though the likeness isn’t as strong) because he can play someone smart, someone bad with women, but as a former fat kid/guy, I think he could’ve really channeled what adult Ben needed to channel. And that’s a shame since Ben and Bev have always been the heart of the story for me. Maybe that’s because I know what it’s like to be the fat kid. Outside of that, Ben represents a classic underdog story who gets the girl in the end and that doesn’t show through in Chapter Two.
And then there is Richie, portrayed by Bill Hader, the best non-Pennywise actor in the film. He doesn’t often get to show his dramatic chops, but he’s quite good (check out The Skeleton Twins in which he co-stars with Kristen Wiig) in dramatic roles, as many comedic actors tend to be. They say this is because many comedians turn to comedy as a means of dealing with the darkness inside of them by joking about them, which also serves to emotionally detach from those feelings. In the film, it’s shown but not stated that Richie is a closet homosexual, which gives the well-executed, graphic hate crime at the start of the film extra weight. His secret is subtly hinted at in the first film as well, not just with the slurs directed at him by Bower’s Boyz, but also in how he picks on Eddie so much, because teasing your crush is a common way for kids to express feelings they don’t yet understand. After Eddie’s death, we see how crushed Richie is in the most poignant moment of the film, when Mike, Bill, Bev and Ben are in waters of rejuvenation, happy for the first time seemingly for the first time, and then Richie breaks down in between them.
At the end of Chapter Two, all the characters were redeemed: Stanley’s letter changed his suicide to taking one for the team, a tactical choice; Beverly escapes a life of abuse; Bill avenges Georgie and jumps back into writing with joy; Ben finally gets the girl of his dreams; Eddie proves he isn’t a coward and saves Richie’s life. But Richie is punished for his secret and he watches the person he loved die saving him, and he never got to truly say how he felt…and it’s quite possible even if he did, Eddie couldn’t reciprocate. It’s possible that Richie will be honest with himself in the future and finally find happiness without the burden of his secret, but he has a lot of healing and work to do first.
The kids in the previous film have more to deal with than Pennywise. They have real world forces working against them and issues they have to overcome. The Adult Losers do not. This is the biggest hindrance to the story as a whole. The added scenes of them as kids should’ve just been in the last film, making the whole totem arc of this film far less exhausting as simply call backs. It was weird that Ben’s clubhouse wasn’t in the last one, but in this one. That these things happened to them yet they never spoke about them. The de-aging of the kids to retain that age was a distraction. The kid cast is great, but they mostly took away from this film. This film was more like the novel in that respect, where the kid and adult storylines play out simultaneously, but it hurt the pacing of this film and ate up too much time. I hope if we see that massive single-film cut Muschietti wants, these scenes will be in the first half and will greatly help the pacing.
Pennywisely Executed
From how Pennywise is presented in this film to how Pennywise acts, there is far greater depth to how IT operates. The film truly nails ITs “true form” far better than that TV movie. We saw glimpses of IT during the final confrontation in the previous film. In the novel ITs true form is said to be impossible for the human mind to comprehend – it drives humans mad – so we see it as a big spider, the closest representation to ITs true form we can envision. The film wisely keeps the façade of Pennywise active while IT’s in ITs true form, which not only allows the character to continue to exist, but is further demonstrative of the fact they can’t see its true form. I don’t think this hit with everyone, but they were wise not to just throw a big spider out there since many hated that in the miniseries. ITs true form is also not a true spider and seems crossed with a crustacean of some kind with a touch of praying mantis. The earlier inclusions of spiderlike images, from the one that emerged from a fortune cookie to The-Thing-homaging spider creature that came out of Stanley’s decapitated head, was both a means of foreshadowing and a chink in his armour from their encounter 27 years earlier because ITs vulnerable true form is more visible to them throughout the run-time.
We see the vindictive side of IT and how IT’s spent 27 years hating The Losers Club. In the novel, IT’s consumed with the need for revenge and IT’s so desperate for revenge that IT employs any means possible achieving that. Unlike the first film, where IT exist as IT has always existed, as a supernatural force that does what IT does because that’s what IT is. But he has motivation this time around, goals beyond habitual feeding. It doesn’t just want to make them afraid, but to torture them as much as possible for daring to challenge him, to injure him; we see this with how it forces Bill to watch IT eat a child Bill’s trying to save, to break his spirit. IT even feigns defeat and weakness twice towards the end just to pull the rug out from underneath The Losers. IT wanted them to feel defeated and hopeless. IT wanted to revel in their powerlessness before eating them. It wanted sweet revenge.
A big aspect of IT in the novel is ITs narcissism. That’s why IT taunts the Losers Club and goads them on because IT doesn’t feel they are ever a threat, so IT toyed with them for ITs own amusement, like a kid playing with his food. In the novel, IT attributes their strength to Maturin The Turtle, not themselves, so IT can remained convinced IT is the superior being. The film does a terrific job of incorporating that aspect of IT as Losers band together to attack ITs sense of superiority in order to ultimately defeat IT. The rampant narcissism of IT is what defeated IT, what caused IT to make mistakes because IT assumed itself to be, essentially, an immortal God. This nicely ties together with what brought The Losers together, being bullied by more powerful forces, at school and at home, and how their solidarity gave them newfound strength to face their tormentors. The Losers turn the tables on Pennywise by using his only true fear to defeat him: that he isn’t an all-powerful, unstoppable, superior entity.
A criticism of how they defeat IT is that it’s the same as the first film, but I disagree on that. The first film was about them literally fighting and defeating their individual fears and removing ITs power over them and forcing IT to escape as an act of self-preservation. In Chapter Two, they force IT to confront ITs fear of not being almighty and IT is unable to overcome that fear as the Losers did. In the end, IT was undone by its own method. It would have been nice if they devoted a little bit of the screenplay to establishing ITs own fear earlier in the film so ITs defeat made more logical sense for those who haven’t read the book.
All in all, Bill Skarsgard kills it in this film as he gets far more time to shine. His physical performance is on another level. The makeup and the presentation of Pennywise is greatly improved as well. Even with all the faults of Chapter Two, I'll no doubt watch the film many times just for Pennywise. He truly crafted an iconic, seminal horror villain, elevating the work of Tim Curry. This accomplishment is rare these days. Outside of The Babadook, what was the last iconic entity in horror? Miss me with Annabelle...stupid fucking doll.
Final Thoughts
I’d say both IT films, as a whole, were a major success financially and with moviegoers. What I hope we get from this is a bunch of good Stephen King adaptations. Gerald’s Game was an excellent adaptation and IT was nearly as good as a film adaptation could be, and Pet Semetary…I’m not even going to both with you. Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining, is out soon, so we’ll see how that turns out. There are so many good novels and stories from King that can be adapted properly this time, to film or TV: The Stand, The Dark Tower, Bag of Bones, The Langoliers are the three I want to see get the proper treatment. There are also a wealth of material that hasn’t been adapted before (to my knowledge): Duma Key, Hearts in Atlantis (the actual story, which the Hopkin’s film wasn’t), Insomnia, Rose Madder, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, are ones I want to see done well. So if this imperfect adaptation means a bunch of Stephen King properties are made, then it’s a big success for this King fan.
Lastly, I feel truly robbed that IT Chapter Two didn’t end with IT Spider-Pennywise vs. Maturin The Turtle. Just imagine how epic the battle between IT and a giant God Turtle would be! It would have been truly something special. I can imagine it in my head, but it’s not as good as what could have been. It would be something like this
