BEFORE: A message penned to my future self - as you write this, you're still in quarantine, out of work and you have to wear a facemask to go out and get groceries. Remember back in April when this film premiered on HBO on a Saturday night, and you and your wife sat down to watch it, because it was another thing that would help pass the time on a weekend that didn't feel all that special, because with everything closed and everyone basically under quarantine, what does a weekend even mean? And remember how you could stay up late, until the morning, really, which was very convenient because after watching "It: Chapter Two" and allowing Stephen King and Pennywise to scare the bejeebus out of you, there was little chance of falling asleep anyway, until the sun came up and you knew you were safe?
I hope that by the time you post this review, in October, that the coronavirus pandemic is over somehow, like maybe somebody found a cure or they started plasma transfusions from recovered people with antibodies, or somebody developed a viral cure that worked and didn't kill even more people. I hope that a time when everyone was afraid to walk outside or hug a friend or even shake hands is a distant memory for you, that they cured all the people in the Javits Center field hospital in time for New York Comic-Con, and hell, while I'm at it, I hope that the final death toll for the pandemic wasn't the 240,000 Americans that some models were projecting, maybe it turned out to be a lot less. That would be nice. I hope you don't lose too many friends, and I hope you get to return to weekend trips, hell, I just hope you get out to go to restaurants again, or be able to go back to work and back to the movie theaters. If so, good for you, if you come out the other side with your health and your sanity (relatively) intact.
I passed on watching "It: Chapter Two" last year, though it shared two actors with "Dark Phoenix", so I probably could have worked it in somehow. And an Academy screener of this one just never arrived, I guess the filmmakers learned from the first "It" film that it probably wasn't going to get nominated for any Oscars. Anyway, how was I supposed to know that movie theaters would all close down in 2020 Thankfully it didn't take too long for this one to premiere on HBO, and since my wife's such a fan of the book, and I sure didn't want to watch this one ALONE, we made time to watch it together as soon as it became available on premium cable.
It's probably too early to be exactly sure how I'm going to link to this one, but I've got some idea - it all depends on whether Disney/Marvel is going to release "The New Mutants" anytime soon, since its release date was pushed back three times even BEFORE the pandemic, and then a fourth time because all the theaters were closed. Perhaps by October they will have given up and just released it to Disney Plus, which would allow me to watch it. If that happened, then I'm guessing my link will be James McAvoy carrying over from "Filth", but if not, then the back-up is for Finn Wolfhard to carry over from the animated film "The Addams Family". It's one or the other...
FOLLOW-UP TO: "It" (2017) (Movie #3,069)
THE PLOT: Twenty-seven years after their first encounter with the terrifying Pennywise, the Losers Club members have all grown up and moved away, until a devastating phone call brings them back.
AFTER: Sure, I could have easily saved this film for October, but since my wife likes so few of the same movies as me, I felt I had to jump on that chance to watch it with her in April, as soon as it aired on HBO. Besides, I didn't know what life would be like in October. Assuming the pandemic ends at some point (remember, I'm still writing this in the past, please, no spoilers) that could mean that maybe they'll stop using the Javits Convention Center as a field hospital, maybe New York Comic-Con will take place as planned in October, and I'll need to work there for a few days. That means fewer slots for horror movies, and watching one now would allow me to slip an extra one in there somewhere.
I watched this between "The Blind Side" and "Ford v Ferrari", and though it shared no DNA with those two films, it called to mind a couple of films I watched earlier that week, like "Midsommar" (both horror films, duh) and "Little Women", which also used the split-timeline editing technique to toggle between two different years, though that Oscar-winning drama jumped back and forth over a 7-year span, and this for-some-reason-not-Oscar-nominated horror story used the same technique to cover a 27-year span. For that, they used two sets of actors, a group of teens for the 1989 scenes and adults for the 2016 scenes. Now THAT reminds me of "The Debt" and "The Tree of Life", which both pulled something similar, and I watched both of those films ALSO in the week leading up to "It: Chapter Two".
I'll say this, on all fronts, "It: Chapter Two" beat all those other films I'd seen recently that used the same techniques. I had a terrible time watching "Little Women" because it just wasn't clear when it was jumping back seven years, and then not clear again when it jumped forward again, and they had to stick in all these little clues like the length of Jo's hair and whether Amy was in France just so that we'd know which year each scene was in, when if they had JUST told the story the way the book did, none of that would have been necessary. Plus, none of the characters looked seven years younger in the past scenes or any older in the more-present scenes. So anyone not familiar with the story and the editing technique would probably have to watch it twice to figure it all out. Using different actors to play the same characters at different stages of life is a much clearer technique, only "The Debt" found a way to screw that up, too, because the actor who played the younger David looked more like the older Stefan, and vice versa, so I just couldn't believe that those people in 1965 grew up to look like THOSE people in 1995. (Oddly, both "The Debt" and "It: Chapter Two" had Jessica Chastain in a starring role, and both films featured her as one of two actresses playing the same role, though in one she played the younger version and in the other, she played the older.)
There are three reasons why the time-toggling works in "It: Chapter Two", and didn't bother me at all - first off, the casting is SPOT-ON. In every instance, I can believe that THAT kid grows up to look like THAT adult. Give that casting director a raise and a bonus, please, this is just how it's supposed to be done. Teen Finn Wolfhard grows up to look like Bill Hader? Just perfect. Of course, they make sure the two actors have the same hair, glasses, etc. but a lot of it just goes back to having similarly-shaped faces and facial features, and that's great casting. I have no doubt they got all the hair and eye colors corresponding correctly, but those are things you can fix with wigs, hair dye, contact lenses or post FX. If the kid playing the older Ben Hanscom or Eddie Kaspbrak doesn't have similar eyes or a smile that calls the younger actor to mind, then it's just not going to work. Secondly, they do a lot of artful transitions here, like a character will remember an incident from when they were a kid, and it will be a cross-fade, or coming out of it, the younger actor will walk forward until his face is super-imposed on the fact of the older actor. So I never had any problem discerning who was who at any time during the flashbacks. Kudos.
Third reason, and I know I rail against flashbacks in this space several times a month, I make an exception for them when it seems like the director has a reason, and knows how to use them. Here the grown-up Losers don't remember their first battle with Pennywise, but being back in Derry, Maine and walking around the city streets and visiting the stores, their encounters with the evil clown come rushing back to them. So each character has at least one flashback, in which they're played by the younger actor. But this is EXACTLY what flashbacks should be used for, to gradually reveal information from the past that wasn't important yet, the audience didn't need to know about every mental torture that Pennywise gave the kids in the first movie, but we get to learn about them at the same time that each character gets to re-remember them, and that's a brilliant bit of story structure.
However, it's also a little formulaic, and after a while it starts to feel like maybe the movie is stalling for time, or more correctly, trying to beef up the last half of the book so it will fill a whole second movie. "Chapter Two" clocks in at 2 hours and 49 minutes, but the 1990 TV miniseries told this same story in just over an hour and a half. OK, so this is a deeper dive, and I don't remember any extended get-together dinner out at a Chinese restaurant, for example - so I'm guessing that a fair amount of filler has been added. Then, after the Losers band together, and stress the importance of maintaining a united front against It, what's the next thing they do? Split up, of course, because each one needs to find a "token" that means something to them, but it also means that each one is going to have a solo scene where they're tortured by Pennywise, either in the past or the present.
I know, I know, I talked after "Midsommar" about how a horror movie is fueled by dumb people doing dumb things. If they didn't split up, they wouldn't get scared again, and they wouldn't have to overcome their fear to defeat the evil power. But maybe they should have struck while the iron was hot, gone to face the evil clown just after hitting town, before they could get frightened and have second thoughts. Nah, let's take a break and go grab some Chinese food, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?
I was intrigued by one of the characters calling It a "virus", especially since the release of this sequel predated the pandemic by at least three months, and obviously it takes two or three years for a film to go through production and post-production. But it's a very good explanation for how It scares so many people in this small town, I mean we all know that the evil entity could be some kind of alien life form that's millions of years old, but how else does It know to appear to people like a clown, or a hobo, or a kindly grandma? There could be some kind of airborne infectious agent, like a virus, that gets into people's systems and makes them hallucinate, so first It's victims see or hear something harmless they're familiar with, like a friend, their mother's voice or a kindly clown, and then in stage 2 of the infection that turns into a manifestation of their darkest fears, and they're paralyzed long enough for the beast to feed. We saw in the first film how Pennywise could access the sewer system from that old house, and every single house in town had modern plumbing, so this infectious agent could get everywhere that way.
This also explains how It knows enough about each person to taunt them with very personal insults - once somebody breathes in the virus, it somehow accesses the victim's brain and either reads the memories directly, or just triggers an all-purpose fear response and the victim enters a dream-state, where they see whatever they're most afraid of, or who they most love turning against them, and it's just not real. By then, It has opened its giant mouth and turned on the "deadlights", so they're paralyzed by visions of the future and their fears, then it's game over.
The kids defeated It in 1989, but they were also aware that Derry had a history of disasters and serial killings, about once every 27 years. So the monster must have had a sleep-cycle or hibernation, and only woke up to feed for a short time, then returned to that dormant stage. The Losers grew up and forgot all about what happened in Derry, however they left one member, Mike, behind in Derry to remember, just in case. When Mike calls the adult Losers to come back to Derry, they feel scared or sick and don't want to come back, only they made a solemn oath to come back and take It down again. One adult can't handle the responsibility, and chooses to commit suicide rather than go back to Derry - look, I get it, sometimes I don't want to go back and see my parents either, but I have to - however, suicide should never be portrayed as an answer to one's problems, not even in a movie. The note that Stanley sends to the adult Losers, which they read at the end, contains his reasons, but I don't think that's enough of a justification.
Another thing that shouldn't be a solution is bullying a bully. If bullying someone is wrong wrong wrong, then meeting bullying with bigger bullying is not a creative enough solution to the problem. Yes, of course It/Pennywise is evil and eats children, but in the flashbacks he's basically seen bullying the Losers when they turn out to be paralyzed with fear. He knows their darkest secrets and teases them, threatens to expose them, he knows that Beverly was abused (raped?) by her father and how Richie feels about Eddie. So at the very end, after the strange Native American ritual doesn't take It down, the Losers are forced to act brave, stand up to It, and bully and berate It by saying that he's nothing but a clown. I'm all for taking back one's power, but I wish they could be strong and do that without tearing their enemy down like that. I guess it's for the best, but are we saying the end justifies the means? I wish a more creative solution could have been found that won't give teens bad ideas about dealing with bullies in the schoolyard. Be best, kids.
The opening sequence of the film, showing a gang of toughs harassing two gay men at the Derry carnival, kind of proves my point. The gay men react to the gang's intolerance by starting a fight, and that's just not productive. Violence is NOT the answer, everybody knows that a better tactic is to call in a hate crime, get these homophobes behind bars or get some financial compensation out of them, maybe they'll learn something that way. Instead the violence escalates, the gang kicks the hell out of the two men and dumps one off a bridge, then things get worse. So I believe this proves my point.
I want to go back to "Little Women" and "The Tree of Life" for another moment, because something that I've learned from those two films (and countless others before them) is an ability to pick out which character in the film is a probable analog for the writer (or director). Hint: It's the one who's also a writer (or screenwriter, or director). Remember when Woody Allen got too old (or too tired) to star in his own movies, so he started getting other people, like Jason Biggs or Larry David, to play the central characters? Before that, when Woody starred in "Annie Hall" or "Hannah and Her Sisters", he always played a writer or a filmmaker, essentially because he was playing a version of himself. I cracked the code on "Little Women" when I noticed how closely Jo March's life seemed to parallel Louisa May Alcott's, and then I noticed how many things director Terence Malick had in common with the Jack O'Brien character in "The Tree of Life".
So, if I apply the same technique here, I'm confident in suggesting that Bill Denbrough is the obvious analog for Stephen King himself. Now I don't think that Mr. King had a younger brother who got lured into the sewers, and to a certain extent a writer inhabits all of his or her characters, just as you are, on some level, every character in one of your dreams, or nightmares. But Bill is a mystery writer who seems to struggle with the endings of his novels, and then fights with movie directors (and his actress wife) who tell him that his endings are no good. I'm betting this is Mr. King's secret fear or personal struggle, am I right? This point is reinforced by the scene where Bill notices his old bicycle for sale in an antique shop, and when he goes in to buy the bike, who's playing the shop proprietor? Why, it's Stephen King himself, known for making cameos in adaptations of his work, much like Alfred Hitchcock or Stan Lee.
But a big BOO to the fact that at the end of "It: Chapter Two", Bill is seen writing a novel about his experiences in Derry, defeating It with his friends, and that's a very, very tired trope. The writer character ends up writing a story based on the story we just saw? Come on, enough already. Anyway, that creates a logical paradox, that within the "It" story in our universe, there's an author who is not named Stephen King, writing a novel called "It"? And is there another character in THAT story who's a writer, and if so, what's his name?
Way too many jump-scares, but that's a common enough problem in horror films these days.
Also starring Jessica Chastain (last seen in "The Tree of Life"), James McAvoy (last seen in "Glass"), Bill Hader (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone (last seen in "Captive State"), Andy Bean, Jaeden Martell (last seen in "Knives Out"), Jack Dylan Grazer (last seen in "Beautiful Boy"), Bill Skarsgard (last seen in "It"), Sophia Lillis (ditto), Chosen Jacobs (ditto), Jeremy Ray Taylor (ditto), Wyatt Oleff (ditto), Jackson Robert Scott (ditto), Owen Teague (ditto), Molly Atkinson (ditto), Stephen Bogaert (ditto), Jake Sim (ditto), Logan Thompson (ditto), Joe Bostick (ditto), Megan Charpentier (ditto), Katie Lunman (ditto), Neil Crone (ditto), Teach Grant, Nicholas Hamilton (last seen in "The Dark Tower"), Joan Gregson, Javier Botet (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Xavier Dolan (last seen in "Bad Times at the El Royale"), Taylor Frey, Jake Weary, Luke Roessler (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Jess Weixler (last seen in "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them"), Will Beinbrink (last seen in "I Saw the Light"), Martha Girvin, Juno Rinaldi (last seen in "Life" (2015)), Brandon Crane (last seen in "It" (1990)), Jason Fuchs (last seen in "La La Land"), with cameos from Stephen King (last seen in "Pet Sematary"), Andy Muschietti, Peter Bogdanovich (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead")
RATING: 7 out of 10 shower caps
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