The Movie: It Chapter Two
The Director: Andy Muschietti
The Cast: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgård, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Andy Bean
The Story: Twenty-seven years after their first encounter with the terrifying Pennywise, the Losers Club have grown up and moved away, until a devastating phone call brings them back.
The Review:
It was a very successful movie because it wasn't a watered down, please everyone, mainstream studio event movie. There were genuine scares and all kinds of dark and creepy stuff that was really unnerving which is why it was such a success. It shocked people and sent them running to tell their friends about how crazy it was. This second chapter as it's called is none of that. Sure, it's got blood and drool and teeth and a super creepy grandma but it's basically a rehash of everything we saw in the first movie just nowhere near as well executed.
James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain are always at or near the top of my favorite actors so I was excited to see what they would do with a genre movie that is a bit of a left turn from what we normally see them in. While they do a fine job, the material limits what they are able to put on screen and ultimately Bill Hader ends up with the best performance simply because he is funnier and more of a personality that anyone else in the movie. Even Isaiah Mustafa, the Old Spice Guy, is reduced to such a generic performance that I was convinced it wasn't him even when my friend pointed out that it was him.
I can't say that this is a bad movie, it just doesn't do anything really well and is basically a retelling of the first movie just with the characters as adults instead of kids. Except when we get flashbacks of the kids that are supposed to fill in gaps during the timeline of the first movie that no one ever thought needed to be filled and I still don't to be honest. None of the scenes with the kids added anything to the movie and just added unnecessarily to the bloated run time. Seriously. Two hours and forty nine minutes. The same story could have been told with a full hour chopped off.
It Chapter Two has it's moments but never comes close to the fantastic frights that propelled its predecessor to being such a surprising success. The whole thing feels watered down, nowhere near as scary, way too long, and the attempt at wrapping everything up in a nice little bow actually left more questions than answers just not in a way that makes you want to know more or see another chapter on screen.
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