Review of It Chapter Two (2019) by Thequietgamer — 09 Oct 2019

While The Conjuring franchise will most likely (and rightfully) go down as James Wan's greatest contribution to the horror scene, filmgoers shouldn't overlook how influential his Insidious movies were to the genre as we know it today. They were big haunted house style attractions that are just as funny as they are scary. You can see countless imitators popping up in theaters regularly trying to capture that same rollercoaster combination of thrills and chills. Andy Muschietti's two IT movies are very much products of that.

The previous film was very much an '80s coming-of-age, comedy-adventure film à la The Goonies or Explorers that just so happened just so happened to have a homicidal clown darkening the tone a bit. Chapter 2 ends up being just as funny, but now that the characters have grown up the content has gotten a fair bit more graphic. Children are murdered in gruesome fashion and Pennywise has tricks that are even more disturbing up his sleeve this time around. Personally, this is one of the reasons I think it's a better movie.

Another one is that it wasn't afraid of taking some of the book's more hard to translate material and put it onscreen. The results are a more fleshed out and faithful adaptation that just so happens to have a lengthy running time some might find exhausting. You can tell they had to leave some stuff on the cutting room floor in order to keep this a strictly two chapter affair (i.e a lack of justification for Bower's return). The only time that really bothered me though was at the very beginning of the movie. I felt they rushed getting the "Loser's Club" back together. We really didn't get to see who they turned into as adults and how they still were clinging to problematic aspects of their past even after all those years. Some nuance was lost as a result. Although it was made up for in the final act where they have to face their demons in a battle of wills in order to lay their collective biggest one to rest for good.

I feel like they did a phenomenal job with the casting. With the exception of maybe Bill, I can actually see the kids from the previous movie growing up to be these people. That's really freaking cool.

Like the book, these movies have a soft spot for the broken, downtrodden, and the outcasts. It's a group of bullied kids that face trouble at school and at home ultimately staring down the evil that infects their town after all. However, even though they represent a variety of features society deems weaknesses, they're ultimately not very diverse with only one girl and minority amongst a group of primarily straight white males. Chapter 2 tries to fix this by changing one members sexuality. It just flat out doesn't work. Aside from the issues already inherent with changing the identity of a previously established character, the decision ends up feeling like an afterthought. Especially in the face of a much more effective portrayal of the kind of violent discrimination homosexuals have experienced that occurs at the very beginning of the film and is actually based on material from the novel. To be brutally honest they did a better job of making this sequel feel more inclusive by giving the black man back his role after passing it off to one of the white characters in the previous outing (yeah, still ticked about that). Glad to see they did Mike right this time around.

The return trip to Pennywise's deranged circus is certainly a long one, but it's filled with unforgettable moments both hilarious and unsettling. I had a blast with its mix of horror, humor, and heart. While there a few things I take issue with I feel like Chapter 2 did just enough to edge out the 2017 flick as the better movie and found it to be a totally satisfying conclusion to a 27 year long battle between a group of kids and a clown.