So It: Chapter 2 is out this weekend. The (obvious) sequel to It 2017 (or It: Chapter 1 as it called itself only at the start of the end credits). This flick has the same writer/director, brings back the kids, and then a bunch of well-cast adult actors to play those kids 27 years later. It’s a well-planned sequel that tells (more-or-less) the second half of the very long Stephen King novel.
It: Chapter 2 launches with the beginning of the novel. The novel was structured (to the best of my memory) as the adults getting calls that jog their memory about what happened to them as kids. These memories are served up as flashbacks in the book and as the plot of the first movie. The adult characters have to return to Derry, Maine now that Pennywise the killer clown has returned and started murdering people again. Thing is, maybe they don’t want to return to that nightmare… but they made a blood oath so they return. And scary clown stuff happens all over again.
The curious thing is, this sequel starts with those phone calls… and still has flashbacks to the previous film’s timeline. But most of those flashbacks are new scenes involving the kids that happened during the events of the first film. Unfortunately, the new scenes kind of punctuate the biggest problem with this sequel… we’ve kind of seen all this before. As in the first flick, we get at least one scene per character… a flashback to a time when Pennywise scared them and a matching scene of, ermm… Pennywise scarring them as adults.
And that’s the main problem with the flick… it’s kind of repetitive with its scares. But the first movie got away with it since it was new… the sequel pulling the same tricks less so. None of its bad, but it is repetitive and the movie is almost three hours long and there’s only so many scares you can get away with before it all becomes mundane. And it doesn’t help that some of the flashbacks seem to retread some of the same themes as the first movie (Bill and his brother… again).
Most of the movie still works despite the fact it feels a bit like a treadmill. You can still have some fun with the scares and the gross-outs. And its good that its not all scares… there’s still some good characterizations of the kids and the kids as adults. Some of it quite funny… there’s a difference in the reaction between a freaky deaky clown scare as a kid than as an adult.
There’s an ongoing joke in the movie that Bill – who grew up to be a famous writer – doesn’t know how to end his novels. Which is an accusation that Stephen King himself often gets. Which was a double meta joke in that It was a book that some people had a problem with the end about. Now, I can’t really remember the end of the book, but the end of this movie is a little messy and convoluted but, I think, ultimately satisfying.
So, yeah, this is still a good movie but not on the same level as the first. The problems in this movie are not of quality, but of quantity. It’s long and repeats the same stuff the first flick did. Not the world’s worst crime. And I’d love to see the inevitable supercut where someone takes both flicks and edits them together to better follow the flow of the novel. So if you’re a fan of the first movie, might as well complete the equation and see this one too.
Score: 84