IT: Chapter Two review: The big finale sinks like a stone

The conclusion to the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s work doesn’t hold water, as It: Chapter Two is buried under the weight of what came before

In 2017 Stephen King adaptations took a serious turn for the horrific with the first installment of IT. Perfectly capturing the nostalgia of ’80s movies but never forsaking fear or characterization, IT became a horror movie with immense replay value. It also raised the bar high for any subsequent installment that would focus on the second half of King’s book wherein the children grew up into adulthood.

Unfortunately IT: Chapter Two tries too hard to please everyone, burdened by the luminosity of its original child actors and desperate to recreate everything you loved in 2017 with everything that needs to be told now. Equal parts bloated and plodding, IT: Chapter Two ends up a disappointing misfire.

Twenty-seven years after the first defeat of Pennywise the killer clown, the Losers Club must reunite to get rid of him once and for all. You wouldn’t think a film with a premise that simple would command a near-three-hour Avengers-level runtime, and yet that’s just the first of many miscues to be found in IT: Chapter Two.

The first hour is predominately exposition, showing us what each of the Losers has been doing with themselves for 27 years. Former leader Bill (James McAvoy) is now a screenwriter with an inability to write a good ending, not unlike a particular bespectacled author whose last name rhymes with Cling. His wife is an actress…and that’s all you need to know about that.

Beverly (Jessica Chastain) is a wealthy wife to a man as physically abusive as her father was. Eddie (James Ransone) remains a hypochondriac married to a woman that I still can’t tell whether she’s the same actress who played his mother or not. Ritchie (Bill Hader) is a successful comedian. Ben (Jay Ryan) is an architect with a six-pack. And Stan (Andy Bean) just wants to do a puzzle and go to Argentina.

These summations might sound simplistic and that’s because they are. IT: Chapter Two should be about the adult Losers but the script (credited solely to Gary Dauberman) hopes to redo as much of what worked in the original as it can, and that means a lot of flashbacks. Nearly half the movie is told with flashbacks to a brief period from the first movie, wherein the Losers drifted apart during the summer before their final fight with Pennywise at the Neibolt house.

Because the kids are now older they can’t be brought back to reprise their roles so they all get a healthy dose of de-aging technology applied. The results are frightening, on par with Henry Cavill’s mustache-free face. The gang has a waxy pallor with the uncanny valley prominent. Some performers, like Jack Dylan Grazier as young Eddie, seem to have their voice altered to sound like they did pre-puberty, giving him a voice mimicking a chipmunk.

If this was just one or two scenes it wouldn’t be a problem, but these are whole swaths of story we’re left with. If the powers that be really wanted to do another story with the children then they should have. Instead, the adult storyline in this sequel feels incredibly ancillary. Not only do the adult versions have weak backstories and little history, but their performances range in performance style from bored to completely committed.

Ransone and Hader are utterly perfect, if only because they capture what audiences loved about Grazier and Finn Wolfhard’s performances from the first film. Hader and Ransone have a great rapport together and understand who their characters were as children and how that would apply to them 27 years later.

Though it is hard not to see both actors as existing in a completely separate movie because they know their characters. Their roles are showy and flamboyant, where the rest of the cast is incredibly dour and serious. Isaiah Mustafa as Mike Hanlon is good, but his role as the historian is so insulting to see now, considering they gave that role to Ben as a child in the first film (whereas in the book Mike is the one keeping records on Derry).

The script hopes you didn’t actually watch the first movie as it possesses no explanation as to why Ben gave up history and Mike stayed behind short of…it is that way now. Ryan is certainly good looking but is completely dull as adult Ben. Chastain and McAvoy are both the biggest names and the biggest letdowns. Chastain is solid but her Beverly has nothing to do short of scream and relive the trauma of her youth. McAvoy is the blandest though that’s more because his character is so ill-defined, so it’s unsurprising that his acting feels scattered and basic.

If you’re wondering how Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise is this go-round prepare for sadness. His Pennywise is nothing more than a funhouse character who pops up here and there. The trailers play up additional backstory involving a Derry carnival, but that doesn’t go beyond a single scene. He’s presented as nothing more than a kid poking at the various Losers with a stick, throwing out an insult here or there. All of the horror and manipulation is gone, if it wasn’t lost in the editing.

The road eventually leads to a climax that’s equal parts convoluted and contrived.

King’s use of Native American rituals and the mystical Negro trope (yep, you thought that was gone in 2019) return with a vengeance for a finale that just feels far too silly to make sense. If it’s in the book there’s nothing earned nor is there groundwork laid for it not to feel like a left-field change in tone. There’s a hope that relying on nostalgia – and outright stealing a key moment from Stand By Me – will make you think it was worth it, but it won’t.

IT: Chapter Two falls under its own weight. The script could have easily used another polish, paring down the exposition and smoothing out some of King’s more outlandish plot contrivances. Had it believed in its adult cast more, things might have been salvaged. Instead, you’ll see it purely to close the book, but expect to “hate the ending.”