It: Chapter Two

In telling a dramatic story and portraying characters in a less coherent manner than in the first installment, It: Chapter Two is rather more B-movie improvisation (the weakest quarter of the film is made up of looking for personal artifacts). On the other hand, the plot is denser and contains more monsters, though they are absurdly incorporated or stolen from somewhere else (the spider head from The Thing finally got more space). Sometimes I enjoyed it, sometimes it was boring, and on the whole I kind of don’t care that I won’t be seeing the third part. (13/09/2019)

Negative feedback after the premiere led me to the decision not to spoil the positive impression of the first part and instead avoid the sequel. I should have stuck with that choice because the result exceeded my worst expectations. It and Chapter 2 are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is incomprehensible how the success of the first part caused Muschietti to lose all his sanity. The first film was not flawless by any means, but it was a dignified and sympathetic adaptation of brilliant source material. Chapter 2 looks and functions like an overpriced low-budget B-movie with an absurd runtime, cringe-worthy dialogues, terrible visual effects, glaring directorial clumsiness, and unremarkable acting, even considering the talented cast. (Jessica was indeed perfect for the role of Beverly, but her presence did not help the film.) The director lost control of the film, failing to capture even a hint of atmosphere and impressiveness. It's sad to say, but Stephen King is used to similar endings regarding his stories. Overall impression: 20%. (31/12/2021)

The second chapter showed in full view how hard it is to pack in a feature film all the 1000 pages of a novel that is so multi-layered in terms of ideas and space-time. The first one smartly stuck to the perspective of the kids and presented It as the manifestation of the natural fears that reside in the soul of every child. The second one had to portray what the adult versions of the heroes had taken from the confrontation of their past demons, and also to bridge their motivations and memories into the tightly connected shells of their characters, and it doesn’t do a bad job at it. It’s mostly a tale about returns; a return to childhood to revive lost memories (which in the middle they have to literally look for), a return to the roots of their characters and their fears, which the hated clown will again incarnate through an almost childish perspective (therefore the criticised CGI monsters), and a return to the old rituals that are supposed to defeat evil, but are in fact only a pretext for that simple return and to be released from its grip and the grip from the past. The film manages to capture all this without offending the fans of the book, as its spirit and the relationships between the characters are relatively well portrayed. To intertwine the past and the present, Muschietti uses imaginative smooth transitions and conversational planes regularly interspersed with digging into more or less fertile horror soil. The main weakness when compared to the novel (which is simply unattainable) is that, whereas in King’s book all the switches between the several characters doesn’t exhaust the reader, but actually increases the tension and the level of information, in the film things become repetitive and the constantly recurring CGI scares loose their power. This is also applies to the long climax, which can never hold your full attention. However, if we consider the scope of the material the screenwriter and the director attempted to cover, the result was ultimately successful. Some of the horror moments are truly good (for instance, the opening scene at the bridge) and it’s a pity that most of it is so accessible and fun – they shouldn’t have spared on realistic violence, and since the film is already R-rated, someone could have though of making Jessica Chastain take off her bra. In any case, as an adaptation of a great book, this is solid work, but I should warn you, if you didn’t like the first one much, don’t expect to love this one at all. 70% (14/09/2019)

The reason that the book It was so exceptional was that it linked the past and the present and their simultaneous build-up, which is logically missing in the movies. A miniseries would be the right medium for an adaptation. But if I have to evaluate how the adult Losers did the second time around, it wasn’t so bad. That the cast is excellent is obvious from the outset in the restaurant scene, where everyone thinks back to their young selves. The problem begins with the approaching climax and the compromises in relation to the book (they make a mush out of it), but they make sense from a visual point of view. The change in the origin of the evil that the clown represents is probably the most painful. And the spider should look like a spider – it’s scarier that way. But the biggest problem is the length, because even though the movie is dreadfully long, a couple more minutes would have been fine… It should have been a miniseries. (10/09/2019)

If Stephen King's book is a culinary specialty, then It Chapter 2 is a patchwork stew made from the same ingredients. It doesn't taste particularly bad, but it's far from a tasty experience. While the first It movie was a solid start to a story about growing up with a reasonably decent level of scary horror, the second part is more like a horror comedy that is not even taken seriously by its creators, who feel the need to systematically disparage all of its more serious and scary moments with comedic interludes and other alienating means (film quotes, inappropriately chosen music). The schematic story suffers from a number of theatrical shortcomings, the horror scenes are often funny or even a parody, and the clown itself is more of a laugh than anything scary. It amounts to simple, average genre routine that recycles motifs of nostalgic childhood and friendly fellowship from its predecessor, replaces tension building with jump scares and digital spooks, and unfortunately, despite a few solid acting performances and a few remarkable scenes, fails to provide anything else worthy of praise. Again, the question arises as to whether it might instead be worthwhile to film It as a narrative series which, unlike a film, could be truly uncompromising, broader in terms of story and more inventive in working with tension and the psychology of fear. (05/09/2019)