It Chapter Two flirts with the concept of “too much of a good thing.” Chapter One found just the right balance of everything that its whole was better than the sum of its parts. Chapter Two’s grander scope throws that balance out of whack a tad, leaving in its wake a merely solid film that thankfully proves once and for all that Bill Hader can do more than just excel in the comedy world.
Every 27 years, Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgard) comes back and attacks the young people of Derry Maine. The last time he came back, he was almost bested by the Losers Club, a group of ragtag kids who figured out Pennywise’s weaknesses. Having thought they killed the clown 27 years ago, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa), a club member who stayed in Derry, is horrified to see that Pennywise is back and stronger than ever. Remembering the oath the Losers took to kill the clown should he ever return, Mike calls up the members of the Losers club and gets them back to Derry, including Bill (James McAvoy), Bev (Jessica Chastain), Richie (Bill Hader), Ben (Jay Ryan) and Eddie (James Ransone). Once back in town, all the horrors of their past return, as the losers try to track down Pennywise and get rid of him once and for all.
The trick with good literary adaptations is making the right decisions on what to keep, and what to cut. The first It film cut all the mythology out of Pennywise, making the clown this enigmatic figure with a certain level of mystique about it. This puts all the burden on Chapter Two to set up Pennywise’s creation and demise. The book has a dense, admittedly kinda crazy mythology around the Clown, and where it comes from. I wish Gary Dauberman and Andy Muschietti found ways to strip down the density a bit, and just ground the story into the metaphor about bullying it eventually gets to. By remaining mostly faithful to the book, the movie adds an extra hour or so of plot making every character get something individually from their past to kill Pennywise. While that’s good character building, it makes the scares Muschietti and Dauberman come up with repetitive. To keep the audience interested, the pair throw some humor into the scares, which compounds the chain reaction by tonally throwing the movie off a tad too much. Are we supposed to laugh? Be scared? It’s unclear, and therefore tougher for Chapter Two to stick the landing.
That being said, there’s more good than bad. Many of those scares are really inventive and creepy, and built around the character who’s being creeped out. The themes of Chapter Two build upon the themes of the first, tapping into trauma and its effects on memory over time, and what can trigger trauma to return. The cast is very strong. James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain have top billing, but Bill Hader is the standout, tapping into Richie’s motormouth ball busting that Finn Wolfhard set up in Chapter One. James Ransone is also quite good as the grown up put upon Eddie. Most importantly, when the climax gets pretty CGI heavy, Muschietti and Dauberman pull back, and remember what the point of the story is, making sure that what’s happening to the Losers is grounded and felt emotionally.
And so the horrors of Derry come to a close. Though It stumbles a bit in the 2nd Chapter, there’s still plenty of juice to keep you interested and rooting for the Losers to take down Pennywise the Clown. I wouldn’t say the It films have made me overcome my fear of clowns though; if anything, my guard will perennially be up whenever I see a clown in public. Thanks for ruining childhood innocence Stephen King…one book at a time.