Scary, silly sequel to a Stephen King shocker
IT: Chapter Two returns us to Derry in Maine, the fictional town preyed upon by hallucinatory evil, where Stephen King set his whopping 1986 horror novel. Twenty-seven years ago, when 2017’s Chapter One, covering just half the book, took place, the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) rose up as a demonic force, claiming young children in the town. Now, Pennywise has crawled back out of the sewers, and the previous survivors of this rampage, preteens back then who have since gone their separate ways after this profoundly
traumatic coming of age, must reunite to face him once more.
King has a jolly cameo here as the cantankerous owner of a musty antiques shop, with a boy’s beloved bike, Silver, standing in the window. It’s a mischievous performance: he’s selling nostalgia, and can name his price when you’re, say, James Mcavoy’s Bill, who used to ride this thing in more innocent days. Bill’s younger brother Georgie was the first and most notorious of Pennywise’s victims, dragged through a storm drain into the clown’s razorsharp maw. There’s a sense, especially thanks to King’s own appearance, of the story coming full circle, three decades after it was earlier adapted into a 1990 miniseries, also a two-parter, starring the memorably freaky Tim Curry.
The surviving members of the first part’s “Losers’ Club” – alongside Mcavoy’s Bill, these are Beverly (Jessica Chastain), Richie (Bill Hader), Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), Eddie (James Ransone) and Ben (Jay Ryan) – must eventually head down to those sewers again, but there’s a great deal to get through first. Following up a $700million worldwide smash the first time, director Andy Muschietti has about double the budget to play with, most of which has gone on
Send in the clown: Bill Skarsgård is an asset as the dreadful Pennywise
the set pieces – some scary, some silly, heavy on digital phantasmagoria – which pave the way from a nicely handled reunion to the subterranean climax. He’s been bold to the point of heavy-handedness with a prologue, which reinstates the scene of a vicious gay-bashing that was too hot for the old miniseries to handle.
This hate crime, meant to suggest the pernicious influence even a dormant Pennywise has on locals, is visited here on a minor character called Adrian Mellon (Xavier Dolan). When King wrote it, he based it on a real-life murder in Bangor in 1984, when a young man called Charlie Howard was thrown off a bridge to his death.
In 2019, the sequence is off-putting mainly for being aggressively dated – there’s even a weird, anachronistic quip about Meg Ryan, of all people. And while the theme of homophobia is perhaps the single most dominant social evil explored in King’s novel, the adaptation has filleted much of this out.
The balance of storytelling versus fun-house theatrics tips more towards the latter here than seems strictly necessary. But while big opportunities are missed to harness the story’s epic potential, time sure does fly when Pennywise and his various alter egos crawl out of the woodwork.
Skarsgård’s ripe performance, with its wicked childishness and sarcastic self-pity, remains an asset Muschietti knows how to use. But the Losers are a mixed bag, convincing less well as a unit than they did as children.
Chapter Two ranks, eventually, as a plateauing of the first part’s promise, rather than the escalation we may have wanted. But undeniable standout Hader’s wonderful ability to meld humour and horror, using each to animate the other, is the best special effect that money can buy.