What A Mess - It Chapter Two
Sequels are hard. Filmmakers have to find a way to show you more of what you have already seen, but with enough fresh ideas mixed in that it doesn’t feel like a rehash. What this movie’s predecessor pulled off was manufacturing horror that was more heart than scares. It did that on the back of a tremendous ensemble cast of foul mouthed kids and a purposeful story. This time, Andy Muschietti returns with the same brand of mild horror, but without the kids to carry the story. If you aren’t bowled over by the occasional quip from Bill Hader, you will 100% wish Pennywise would bite your head off next, because there’s not much else to enjoy here.
The film opens with a sequence that shows that after a 27-year hiatus, Pennywise (played by Bill Skarsgard), the murdering clown, is back. When Mike Hanlon (played by Isaiah Mustafa), the only member of the Losers’ Club who still lives in Derry, realizes this, he calls his old friends to tell them they must come back. After a lot of back and forth, the gang reunites in Derry, Maine, their old hometown. But as soon as they start to reminisce about their childhoods, things take a dark turn.
With Pennywise haunting them, the old friends must face their fears and band together. Along the way they encounter horrifying challenges and personal struggles that threaten to derail them before they get the chance to vanquish Pennywise for good.
The movie’s most annoying habit is following these individual characters through separate journeys at various points. Almost like montages, these scenes are stitched together in the most predictable and boring way possible. We watch each character get the call that Pennywise is back, we watch each character face down and overcome their fear. One after another, in a way that balloons the runtime, these scenes come together with no real payoff. They rely on the liner notes version of backstory we have on each of them and they just don’t work.
It can be hard to know a movie like this is so long before it starts. It can mean you focus on every ten minute segment that could have been cut along the way. The problem with It Chapter Two is that that feels like half the movie. Like the final season of Game of Thrones, it is probably both too long and too short. Too long to not feel excruciating pain with every additional bad idea; too short to take its time and not be a disaster. Perhaps there is a world where this final installment is two movies and doesn’t feel like a patchwork of disjointed pieces. But this isn’t that world. This is Muschietti’s world and I am glad we don’t have to go back.
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