Initial Thoughts on "It: Chapter Two" (2019)

The first screen interpretation of “It,” the TV miniseries back in 1990, is a perennial guilty pleasure of mine. And the book is one that I have read multiple times. The 2017 movie, telling the childhood half of the story was a rousing success and one of the better horror movies ever made. So naturally, I was pretty pumped to check out this year’s second half. Not just for more of the same scares, but to go deeper into the frankly deep themes of the story.

The film had some big challenges to begin with. The adult half of the story is never as compelling, especially on its own. And, as the movie itself constantly reminds us, King struggles with endings. So, I tried to temper my expectations.

And, without getting into too much spoiler territory (I’ll save that for multiple posts in October) here are my initial thoughts:

The film is long. Yes, probably too long. Not that 3 hour movies are not potentially good. But this one accents its length with sloppy structure. It feels less like a story—or even the book it retells—than a video game in structure.

The scares, while jumpy and startling, are not as scary. There is even more CGI and digital manipulation than in the first film, and there that was the biggest weakness.

There are some more gems of set-pieces. The girl under the bleachers, Bev in her old house, and Richie at the statue spring to mind. Others do not measure up to the vook or the first film.

The use of music did not seem as refined as the first film.

But the themes of childhood trauma and memory are still there. As well as a commendable attempt to explore not just fear, but also shame and guilt as themes is interesting.

And, as always, when you try to adapt something as metaphysical as the ending of “It” you are going to run into problems. This one does much better than the miniseries did, but anything would be better than that.