In attempting to cleave King\u2019s time-hopping 1,138-page best-seller into two temporally distinct halves, screenwriter Gary Dauberman (the man behind the Conjuring<\/em>-universe films, as well as the truly abysmal and forgotten Wolves at the Door<\/em>) effectively strips the entire story of the Losers\u2019 Club \u2014 a group of preteen misfits from the small town of Derry, Maine \u2014 of most of its resonance. The first film in particular, which follows the kids as they seek to destroy the ancient evil that has taken on the form of Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd), felt constrained by the straightforward linear storytelling approach. In Chapter Two<\/em>, we mostly follow the grown-up versions of the Losers as they\u2019re summoned back to Derry 27 years after the events of Chapter One, but plentiful flashbacks to those earlier years do help pull the new film\u2019s plot together.<\/p>\n Why does it take nearly three hours to defeat Pennywise this time around? Well, it\u2019s mostly because the film dedicates so much of its running time to visually elaborate but narratively unnecessary sequences in which each Loser is separately haunted by their old clown friend as they revisit their old stomping grounds \u2014 aside from the sole black character, Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), who is more or less sidelined for the duration. It\u2019s enough to make you wish King had written fewer Losers into his book, as these long scare scenes become incredibly repetitive. The filmmakers have also picked up the weak romantic subplot(s) from Chapter One here, weirdly placing the adult Beverly (Jessica Chastain) into an odd and underdeveloped triangle with Bill (James McAvoy), now a horror writer who can\u2019t write a good ending to save his life (get it?), and Ben (Jay Ryan), the formerly pudgy new kid who has turned into a generically hot architect with abs since his friends last saw him.<\/p>\n Not that the structure and pacing are the film\u2019s only problems. Dauberman and Muschietti\u2019s decision to kick off their summer popcorn movie with a brutal gay-bashing scene \u2014 one that exploits a real-life tragedy, no less \u2014 that the camera can\u2019t seem to cut away from feels indefensible. This staggering act of violence carried out by a group of cruel teenagers is never really reckoned with; instead, it\u2019s made into a gruesome and almost cartoonish reintroduction to Pennywise, who is waiting beneath the bridge to finish off the job. It also diminishes the nice work the filmmakers do of tentatively exploring the relationship between Eddie (James Ransone) and Richie (Bill Hader), something that was hinted at in King\u2019s book but never mentioned in Chapter One. (I will say that I continue to be amazed by Hader\u2019s work \u2014 he continues to turn in very good performances in very bad films.)<\/p>\n If anything, the film serves as a compelling reminder to get to therapy ASAP and work through that early childhood trauma. If not, you just might wake up 27 years later living through the same old tedious nightmare (pining after your old middle school crushes \u2014 the absolute horror), doomed to spend the rest of eternity being frightened pestered by one seriously toothy circus reject. Before I get into grading It: Chapter Two, I\u2019ll admit to being a bit baffled by the runaway success (commercially, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":12558,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nGrade: D+<\/span><\/h3>\n
2 hrs., 49 min.; rated R for disturbing violent content and bloody images throughout, pervasive language, and some crude sexual material.<\/h5>\n
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