Review: It: Chapter Two

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

It was, perhaps, fated that Andy Muschietti's cinematic second chapter of Stephen King's gargantuan 1986 novel "It" would be a little bit of a letdown. The second half of the novel - which ranks among King's scariest and best - isn't quite as compelling as the first and, as a running gag points out in the picture, its ending isn't its strongest asset.

That being said, there's a decent amount to like in the film's whopping 165 minutes, including some strong performances - Bill Hader is a standout as the adult Richie Tozier - and surprising social commentary.

The film opens with the brutal beating of Adrian Mellon (played by Canadian director Xavier Dolan), a gay man who is accosted by some small-town homophobes in the fictional town of Derry, Maine after he attends a local carnival with a boyfriend. After he is beaten, he is dumped over the side of a bridge, where he is then murdered by supernatural psycho clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard), the film's uber-villain. In both the novel and book, the incident was inspired by the fatal attack on Charlie Howard, a gay man who was also beaten and thrown off a bridge in Maine in 1984.

During other scenes in the film, a character who is a closet homosexual is called a homophobic slur by a redneck townie and, if you'll recall, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa), the one black member of the Losers Club, was mistreated due to his race in the first film. In "It: Chapter Two" especially, Pennywise appears to bring out the hatefulness in the small town of Derry, and it's left to the members of the Losers Club - a majority of whom have left their small town and moved to the big city - to return and fight not only an evil entity, but also their hometown's small mindedness.

King's works are always at their most compelling when they focus on the characters, rather than the supernatural elements (although, that's often a lot of fun too). This proves to be the case in this film. The best scenes involve the characters reuniting, and the cast does a great job of convincing the audience that the kids from the first film could grow up to be these people. Hader is often hilarious, but also surprisingly vulnerable, and James McAvoy (as Bill Denbrough, now an author who is prodded for his "bad endings") is solid, while the other Losers - Jessica Chastain as Bevy, Jay Ryan as Ben, Mustafa and James Ransone as hypochondriac Eddie - are also very good.

If only the film's two-hour-and-45-minute running time had merely been a reunion with these characters. The shared trauma between the members of the Losers club and the concept that when you outrun the past, not only do you leave behind the hardships, but also the good memories and people you care about, make for compelling stuff.

Alas, the film gets bogged down in sequences during which each of the characters is terrorized for long periods of time by Pennywise. I know, that's one of the film's main draws - and don't get me wrong, the clown is pretty creepy when he's not being cartoonish - but there's too much going on at all times in this film. It's a little too busy.

There's at least two scenes per character in which they are attacked by some incantation of Pennywise - a gigantic old woman, a large Paul Bunyan figure, spiders, etc. - and the film has a slavish devotion to the novel, thereby including a whole lot of material that could have been left on the cutting room floor.

So, when "It: Chapter Two" is focused on how the bonds forged through friendships made at a young age and shared experiences, especially traumatic ones, can shape one's adulthood, Muschietti's film works quite well. But the nonstop special effects-driven sequences often feel as if they go on endlessly and, ultimately, "It: Chapter Two" ends up being a little too long and too much. It's not a bad movie - in fact, it's often quite engaging - but it doesn't live up to the much better first chapter.