Based upon the novel by Stephen King
Screenplay Written by Gary Dauberman
Directed by Andy Muschietti
*** (three stars)
RATED R
The dark side of childhood has reached adulthood...and it has only grown more treacherous.
When we last saw the members of The Losers Club, the tormented septet of adolescent misfits of Derry, Maine circa 1989, they had defeated the ravenous Pennywise the Dancing Clown deep within the cavernous bowels of the city through the unbreakable bonds of their union and friendship. Or so they thought...
As I have often written upon this blogsite, the horror genre is one I tend to steer clear of as I am not a person who finds enjoyment within the sensation of being scared. This is not a firm rule as there are several films within the horror genre that I have seen and thoroughly enjoyed as the commitment to story and characters are first and foremost rather than the jump scares, blood and gore.
When I first saw and reviewed Director Andy Muschietti's "It" (2017), his superb adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel, I praised the film highly for that very reason. Muschietti's commitment to the exploration of a group of children facing their deepest, most horrific fears, both real in an explicitly harsh world and imagined via the various manifestations of Pennywise, while discovering their sense of inner strength while creating bonds with each other was as poignant as it was often terrifying, thus making for a deeply felt, tightly constructed, undeniably artful experience that transcended the horror genre.
With the arrival of the second half of the story, Muschietti's "It: Chapter Two," we unfortunately do not scale as highly as the first half. But that being said, the film does burrow its way under your skin, is perhaps more ambitious than it can possibly handle even in its hefty yet freight train paced three hour running time and it is again a highly perceptive and poignant exploration of the monumental power of fear and how it plays sharply into the sometimes unreliability of memories. Where the first film was straightforward in its narrative, "It: Chapter Two" is sprawling, unconventional, very strange, a tad messy and unquestionably filled with raw emotion--much like the nature of fear and memory themselves--making for a darkly psychedelic yet still riveting experience.
"It: Chapter Two" opens 27 years after the events of the first film with an event of blistering, horrific fury, the attack and murder of a young gay man who is beaten by a gang of homophobes and thrown into the rushing waters of the river.
The hate crime provides the catalyst for the return of Pennywise (again portrayed by Bill Skarsgard) from his slumber to not only literally feast upon the unsuspecting citizens of Derry, but enact his revenge upon The Losers Club--leader, stuttering Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Martell), the physically and sexually abused Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis), overweight Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), hypochondriac Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer), the foul mouthed Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard), the pragmatic, and Jewish, Stanley Uris (Wyatt Oleff) and Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs), soft spoken, studious and one of the few African-Americans in the town.
Pennywise's re-awakening has also altered the adult Mike Hanlon (effectively played by Isaiah Mustafa), now Derry's head librarian (and who even resides within the library), who remembers the oath taken by himself and his friends 27 years ago--that if Pennywise ever returned, they must reunite to defeat him once and for all. Yet, except for himself, none of his friends reside in Derry anymore.
The adult Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy) is now married to a famous actress and is himself a successful author and screenwriter in Los Angeles, yet is often chastised for his unsatisfying ending. Richie Tozier (Bill Hader) is now a famous stand-up comic. Ben Hanscom (Jay Ryan), now based in Nebraska and working as an in-demand architect, has long shed his extra weight from childhood for which he was bullied. Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransome), while still a hypochondriac and now married to a woman who eerily resembles his Mother in appearance and temperament in New York City, has also become a successful risk-assessor. The adult Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain) has become a successful fashion designer, yet is trapped within an abusive marriage. Rounding out the former members of the Losers Club is Stanley Uris (Andy Bean), whose participation in a rematch with Pennywise is questionable at best.
Once Mike has established contact with all of his former friends, one by one, they each return to Derry, all of whom housed with hazy memories of their youth and the Summer of 1989 in particular, yet Pennywise remains relentlessly wrathful. As the members of the resuscitated Losers Club re-trace the steps of their respective pasts as they precariously march towards what could end up as a fatal future, memories slowly begin to reveal themselves as they all confront their greatest terrors, all designed to stop the from vanquishing Pennywise.
When I first sat "It," two years ago, I had not read the Stephen King novel but that film did indeed inspire me to try it out as I had never read a Stephen King novel before (remember, I don't enjoy being scared). Now two years later, I still have not finished the book, as I felt that I needed to take breaks from it due to its massive length of 1,138 pages and labyrinthine plotting and storytelling, which does unfold in a striking, propulsively written non-linear narrative and contains all manner of asides, side stories and stories within stories within stories. In fact, the novel feels as if it is a book that is about stories and storytelling combined with a morass of memories and mounting fear, possibly making Pennywise exist as a metaphor for America's dark underbelly which threatens to engulf all that is good in the world.
With that in mind, it is even more amazing that Andy Muschietti's "It: Chapter Two" turned out as well as it did, as the novel from which it is based feels to be essentially unfilmmable. But Muschietti has clearly remained intrepid and I swear he damn near pulled it off. Just as with the first film, "It: Chapter Two" is a lavishly designed and presented experience that works like the devil to establish its own independent tone while also working as a continuation of what we have already seen.
Where the first film remained locked in place, so to speak, as we never left the Summer of 1989 storywise, this second film allows Muschietti to let his freak flag wave highly and proudly by alternating between 1989 and 2016 as well as placing the heroes of our story--both teenagers and adults--into one nightmarishly hallucinogenic cavalcade of Pennywise's sound and fury, some of which includes a hall of mirrors, a monstrous Paul Bunyan statue come to life as well as a downright rapacious nod to a sight first seen in John Carpenter's "The Thing" (1982).
In a way, this second film is more faithful to the novel than the first film, even though the ambitiousness of the entire proceedings nearly gets away from Muschietti from time to time. But again, and I am unable to stress this enough, I wonder just how he had the audacity to tackle this novel in the first place.
"It: Chapter Two," oddly enough, never quite feels like a sequel, or at least a film that you know is nothing more than something mercenary. With this installment, Muschietti uses the adult characters as a means to forge a dialogue with their younger selves. from the first film--and to their collective credit, all of the adult actors perform an excellent job of channeling the work of the younger actors while forging ahead for themselves. In addition to accomplishing this feat, the film is also shouldered with the challenge of having to address the history of Derry, including mythology with The Ritual Of Chud, and grander psychedelics as memory and fear, plus the past and present mount and collide.
Now, there has been some criticism over the new film not having the adult characters spend as much time together as their teenaged counterparts, therefore having a crucial lack of camaraderie. To that, I do disagree as the adult Losers Club's more fractured nature is indeed story driven as all of the members who have left Derry have also found themselves afflicted with hazy, shadowy and fractured memories of their entire experiences there, especially concerning Pennywise and ultimately, the depth of their relationships with each other. All they have is the crippling fear and what they need is a stronger sense of communion, friendship, loyalty and love to become victorious. And trust me, there are some scenes during the climax and especially during its lovely final moments that are all genuinely moving.
With that in mind, it only makes sense that the adult characters are not as connected as when they were children. "It: Chapter Two" is about the regaining of that bond as it is Pennywise's resurrection.
Muschietti has fashioned a film that works as a quest as each solo divergence is structured to unearth some artifact of truth that can be utilized for the final battle with Pennywise. While this tactic may prove frustrating for some viewers, I felt that it allowed Muschietti to have a wider canvas to explore what memory is and how it is often interchangeable with fear, because if something traumatic happened when one is younger, how does that trauma play itself within that person's mind. Does it is increase the trauma in size and scope rather than make it smaller, therefore becoming a fear that is potentially insurmountable?
This concept plays out conceptually as well as metaphorically. The child abuse Beverly suffered clearly has forged a path for her to end up in an abusive marriage. Eddie's overbearing Mother certainly set the stage for the woman he would eventually marry, for instance. But, even with all of Pennywise's manifestations and the hallucinations he conjures, everything is purposefully massive, all designed to overwhelm forcing his victims to succumb to his malevolence and therefore be consumed. Even as we, and the Losers Club, venture back into the depths of Pennywise's lair, the fact that it only continues to deepen, and even widen the further one descends, it is yet another metaphor for the engulfing nature of fear (and furthermore, the nature of evil and the sins of Derry).
Frankly, it would not be far fetched to assume that "It: Chapter Two" is also housing an impassioned bit of cultural commentary about how fear, both real and often, largely imagined, can be weaponized to unleash real world horrors designed to keep us afraid and unable to find the strength to confront and yet, how it is only through a shared communal belief can there be any potential uprising against...well, it.
Andy Muschietti certainly works overtime to nearly assault our heroes and us in the audience with one surreal vision after another, barely giving us time to breathe. In many ways, this approach works very well. Oddly enough, I actually did not find myself particularly scared during "It: Chapter Two." That being said, I was more than a little worked over due to the velocity and intensity of the film which felt like being thrown into the netherworld of a grim funhouse mirror or being trapped in the most ferocious fever dream.
On the other hand, at times, the rapid pacing worked against the tension, making certain sequences feel terribly rushed, as if Muschietti was playing a breathless round of "Beat The Clock" as he tried to get his film finished by the time of the pre-determined release date. The sequences of the adult Losers Club members receiving their initial phone calls from Mike hurtle in a flash instead of weaving a sense of creeping doom and dread. The return of bully Henry Bowers (played by Teach Grant) is handled with such alacrity that I hardly knew what had happened and nearly chalked it up to being a Pennywise fueled hallucination.
But those flaws aside, Andy Muscietti's "It: Chapter Two" is quite the achievement, as it is a story told with skill, heart, force and even a tremendous amount of empathy in its view of love, friendships and the solidarity of community when rising up against a seemingly unbeatable danger.
And in our 21st century, darkly hallucinogenic real world, perhaps we actually need a film like this more than we think.
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