2017’s It adaptation worked brilliantly. It was a well directed, well acted coming-of-age movie bolstered by terrific horror set-pieces, some well handled thematics and a great sense of humour. Unfortunately, its sequel is uniformly disappointing, managing to drop the ball in almost every area that the previous film kept it so impressively aloft.
Chapter 2 has issues all over the place, profound issues, but puts its first foot wrong in its opening sequence. The film opens with a graphic homophobic assault, placed in with little to no context and establishing ideas and a tone that are not of a piece with the rest of the film. Though many have argued that the inclusion of this hate crime is an example of horror’s need to engage with the real horrors of the world, not just the imagined, in execution the scene only functions to tastelessly add edge and to superfluously further demonise the central villain. It’s a moment that is never returned to and only really makes sense as a portrayal of the evil behind facades of normality – a trope that has been done to death and that is only effective when it extends beyond this basic message, or is ingrained throughout the film. Here, it is throwaway. In the novel, the idea that Pennywise has infected the town is threaded throughout. In the first film, this idea was cleverly hinted at – and displayed, if not overtly commented on. In Chapter 2, real abuse is set dressing: using recognisable trauma as mere spice to add impact to your horror. Your mileage may vary but I found this hugely distasteful. It is important to engage with the real horrors of the world, and what better a genre to do it in than horror, but ‘engage’ is importantly ‘distinct’ from include.
The troubling content is not unique to this scene, and does exist in the source text. However, the source text is dated and has been updated for this film. The time period is different and once this change is made, you can’t just drag the past into the present. Tragically, homophobic assault feels very at home in a modern setting. However, there is also the abysmal presentation of mental illness, Native Americans and women (Jessica Chastain does well with her woefully limited role, in which character is reduced to having the autonomy of a football, passed from man to man in order to add to their character arcs). The issues are not limited to these examples but these points stand out as particularly egregious in a modern setting. For example, Native Americans presented only as magical figures that, when they are not taking hallucinogens to go on vision quests, are enacting ancient rituals to trap evil spirits – it’s astonishing that this goes uncommented upon, and that there isn’t any further representation to at least balance this, in a modern film. Of course, the regressive tropes pushed out by film in the past have always been wrong but trotting them out in today’s cultural context shows an astonishing lack of self-awareness. People will still argue, ‘it’s in the book,’ but – once again – so much is changed and altered and other sequences (like the infamous sewer orgy) have been wisely omitted.
Politics aside, the film just doesn’t work. And, you know what, the problem seems to be the source material. The core plot of this film is ridiculous in all the worst ways. It’s set twenty-seven years after the first film and our child stars are now adults. This is an issue, as the coming-of-age drama brought so much to the previous film and is sorely missed here. There are overwhelming issues with the film’s internal logic – in regards to what Pennywise can and cannot do, or should just do – that were not as glaring when complimented by the theme of childish imagination. Now, the melodrama feels contrived and there’s no emotional stakes to ground it. You care about the characters, somewhat, but only because they were so great in the previous film. If you were to take this film by itself, the characters hold very little interest and so little is done with them.
The opening act is made up of vignettes in which the gang is brought back together. Here, Mike (Isaiah Mustafa) is charged with phoning them up one at a time in order to get everybody back to town to fight Pennywise, hopefully, one last time. Mike, for poorly justified reasons, is the only one who stayed in the (fictional) town of Derry and is reduced to a telephone switchboard – and his characterisation never really rises above this. And the others aren’t much better. Each ‘where are they now’ vignette is poor, showing hilarious misunderstadings of every area they are supposedly now in (or chucking in domestic abuse, for flavour, in a misguided manner that further detracts from the ‘Derry makes adults evil’ idea that is never ostensibly made by the film). At this point, the film already drags. Then, we are back to Derry and, for convoluted plot reasons, the gang each, individually, go and get a personal token that will help them to fight Pennywise (what these tokens are and can be is so loose as to make any engagement impossible). It’s a plot movement that is utterly superfluous; it makes little sense at its genesis and is never actually necessitated by the climax. You could cut out the entire second act of this film and it would be better. It would make more sense. And, importantly, it wouldn’t be an, excessively bloated, two hours and forty-nine minutes. Nothing would be lost. Well, there are some visually interesting horror set-pieces (bringing back positive memories of the previous film) but some of these feel too much like ‘The Greatest Hits from That Last Film That You Liked’ and the set-up for them all is, as mentioned, so mind-numbingly stupid that it’s hard to invest. In this section, you also get a lot of poorly handled 80s nostalgia – including a flashback that riled up my nerdy side with the inclusion of time travelling arcade cabinets*. Also, the film has an irritating habit of undercutting any pseudo-scary moment with an overt gag. Every time it gets close to horror: joke. Humour was a big part of the first film, but there was also real horror and effective menace. It: Chapter 2 is a rollercoaster that goes up and up, giving you great anticipation, only to then just level out – never going into freefall.
And then we have the final act, which is seemingly determined to out-stupid all previous movements. In regard to this apparent aim, it’s a complete success. The final showdowns and realisations are jaw-droppingly dumb, expertly complimenting everything beforehand to create a melange of meaninglessness. To explain how bad the supposed climax is would be to spoil, and the filmmakers have spoiled things enough as it is.
Ultimately, I left It: Chapter 2, with a heavy sense of disappointment. The casting is excellent; the cinematography still strong and much of the acting is great (Bill Hader deserves a special mention as the acting highlight; James MacAvoy perhaps drops the ball, failing to bring emotion but trying very hard – though, to be honest, I blame the material) but the film doesn’t work. The creatives involved in the adaptation do deserve some of the blame – the choices they have made in what to include or cut, and how to present their ideas, are uniformly bad – but the core issue seems to be the material on which the film is based. If you take away the compelling trappings of children struggling to find themselves, and having to battle evil at the same time, you are left with a pretty loose horror logic and uncompelling external world building. When It feels rooted in reality, in character and in emotion, It works. When It gets involved with its own lore, It sinks like a stone.
*NERDIEST ASIDE OF ALL TIME: A character is playing the original Street Fighter in an arcade, a remarkably poor choice already (Street Fighter superfans, like myself, tend to pretent SF2 was the first) but this poor decision is made even worse by the fact that the arcade houses Mortal Kombat 1 and 2. Superior games, obviously, but also games that came out… in the 90s. If the film hadn’t already lost me, this would have been my small hill on which to die.
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