Review #80: It Chapter Two (2019)

This review was originally written in October 2019.

October Horror Movie Review #28: It Chapter Two

I first read Stephen King's It when I was in high school; it was the first book I'd ever read that actually scared me, and this new movie adaptation did not disappoint. Everyone has memories about how the TV miniseries scared them as a kid, but I can say without question that it does not hold up nowadays. (Fight me.) I really liked the first chapter when it came out a couple years ago (there were some changes to the original story I wasn't fond of, like giving Mike's entire role to Ben and damseling Beverly, but overall I thought it was as good as I could reasonably expect) but Chapter Two blew that one out of the water in my opinion, which is surprising since all I heard about it was that it wasn't as good as the first.

I loved how well the adult actors encapsulated the same performance as their child counterparts- they all felt perfect for their roles. The scenes where the characters are reliving their forgotten experiences around Derry were absolutely terrifying, and I liked seeing how each character's fears both motivated them and got in the way of wanting to see this through to the end. I'm not certain how much of that credit goes to the writer of the screenplay, the director, or Stephen King, but whatever the case, it made the movie great.

It wasn't all perfect; there were a few things that bothered me that I feel the movie could have done without. The first is Eddie getting stabbed by Bowers. He takes like a four-inch blade directly into the side of his face, and all they do is put some gauze over it and he's fine? Either his jaw is very oddly-shaped and the blade managed to just go through his cheek and into his mouth cavity (in which case he'd have trouble talking for the rest of the film) or that knife buried itself inches deep in bone, and he'd have all sorts of problems that gauze isn't going to solve. If the intention was to have him be superficially wounded (the moment afterward is pretty badass), why not have him get stabbed, I dunno, literally anywhere except right into the meat of his head? Stab him in the shoulder or side or leg or hand or something. Movie heroes get stabbed in those places all the time. The face, not so much.

The next thing that bothered me was Stan's letter at the end. I get it; they wanted his character to have an arc instead of just an unceremonious end right at the beginning. But I feel that by having his suicide be intentional, to call out its positive effects on the rest of the characters, is to diminish the strength of those other characters. What's wrong with a group of heroes that press on through adversity and come out on top in the end? Why do you have to have their only weak link say "Hey guys, my weakness is actually a strength and you didn't get through this because you're strong, you got through this because I manipulated you into doing it"? Neither one is objectively bad, but I prefer a world where sometimes bad things happen and you get through it because you have to. It's more realistic. Not only that, I don't need it spelled out for me. Imagine if Spider-Man found a note from Uncle Ben that said, "Hey Peter, a mugger is going to kill me but I know that it will motivate you to become a better person." I don't need Uncle Ben to say that on-screen- I already know it's going to make Spider-Man a better person because the movie is going to show me through the events of the story! And the fact that Stan's letter wasn't in the book (it was a deliberate addition to the film) makes me feel like test audiences just didn't like that one of the protagonists of the previous film took his own life, so the writers then compromised the integrity of the rest of the characters and their struggle in order to satiate them. Is it a huge deal? No, but it's disappointing.

Back in the positives, the monster design in this film was top-notch. Everything that Pennywise did had my skin crawling- the head that turns into a spider, the design of the creature at the end with the glowing lights floating behind a hole in the back of the monster's throat- it was all absolutely terrifying and I loved every second of it.

All in all, I have no clue why this movie got such a lukewarm reception and I recommend everyone go out at watch it if you haven't yet (but of course watch the first chapter beforehand)!

Overall Rating: 10/10

Favorite Change from the Book: I'm very glad they omitted the scene where the kids all have sex in the sewer. (That isn't a joke- it's actually a scene in King's novel.) They didn't even make a nod to it in the movie; they just ignored it entirely. As they should have.