IT: CHAPTER TWO (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

it: chapter two (2019) movie

Genre              |   Horror Thriller

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   135 minutes

Released         |   5 September 2019

cast

Sophia Lillis ... Young Beverly
Jessica Chastain ... Beverly Marsh
Jaeden Lieberher ... Young Bill
James McAvoy ... Bill Denbrough
Finn Wolfhard ... Young Richie
Bill Hader ... Richie Tozier
Jeremy Ray Taylor ... Young Ben
Jay Ryan ... Ben Hanscom
​Bill Skarsgård ... Pennywise

director

​Andy Muschietti

writer

​Gary Dauberman ... (screenplay by)
Stephen King ... (based on the novel by)

cinematographer

Checco Varese

music

Benjamin Wallfisch​

film editor

​Jason Ballantine

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box office result

Worldwide               $​473,093,228

Australia                 $​10,600,000

North America        $​211,593,228

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movie minutiae

Chastain, Skarsgård and McAvoy have starred in at least one X-Men movie. Chastain and McAvoy also starred together in X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX (2019), marking this their third collaboration, and Skarsgård was in DEADPOOL 2 (2018). This is also Skarsgård and McAvoy's first collaboration since ATOMIC BLONDE (2017).

​Although this movie is about the adults, the kids will be making appearances in some flashback scenes.

This is the second Stephen King adaptation released in 2019, following PET SEMATARY (2019). IT: CHAPTER ONE (2017) was also the second-wide release Stephen King adaptation in 2017 following THE DARK TOWER (2017).

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IT: CHAPTER TWO (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

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IT: CHAPTER TWO (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

The evil clown Pennywise returns 27 years later to torment the grown-up members of the Losers' Club.

IT: CHAPTER TWO (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 5 September 2019

Pop ​Movee Rating

The second part of Andy Muschietti’s feature film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 Horror tome has production value to burn but has a weak, off-kilter screenplay that struggles to balance characterisation and plot; ultimately failing to deliver a satisfying conclusion despite its hefty 169 minute running time...

The biggest hurdle IT: CHAPTER TWO always faced was the diminished role the “kid” version of The Losers would play. In King’s novel, the story cuts back and forth between the 1950s and the 1980s. In the films, the timeline has been altered to the 1980s and the 2010s, but the narrative flow is now linear, with a mid-film series of flashbacks inserted to help flesh out some of the background detail not covered by the first film.

The relative absence of Jaeden Martell, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer and Sophia Lillis is a hurdle IT: CHAPTER TWO never fully overcomes...

Writer Gary Dauberman, who also wrote the first instalment, receives sole credit for the screenplay, but it sure could have done with some further work. 

Dauberman’s prior screenplays, such as ANNABELLE (2014), THE NUN (2018) and ANNABELLE COMES HOME (2019), are not very good and it’s only their connection to THE CONJURING universe mythology that imbue them with scant credibility.  He did a little better with IT (2017), but Director Andy Muschietti also compensated for any script shortcomings with great casting of the kid versions of The Losers and stunning visuals.

Unlike the child stars of IT (2017), the chemistry between the adult version of The Losers never materializes and Dauberman’s meandering screenplay is more like a series of vignettes that cobble together the action highlights of the novel without the context of why they occur.

Bill Hader, as the adult Richie “Trash Mouth” Tozier, is the standout, along with James Ransone as Eddie Kaspbrak. 

Hader is well regarded for his comedy, but he always has an edge in his delivery that hints at a darker side. As Richie, Hader gets to explore this at points throughout the film as his character grapples with how his life has turned out as he and the other Losers process their looming confrontation with Pennywise.

Dauberman’s script provides Richie with a reveal that changes the nature of one of the key relationships in the film and is one of the biggest departures from the source material. Fans of the book will argue that it is an unnecessary addition, but it provides a very strong rock upon which Hader is able to anchor his entire performance.

The biggest problem with the adult characters is the casting of James McAvoy as Bill Denbrough…

McAvoy is a good actor, but he seems so different to the kid version, played by Jaeden Martell (who has changed his surname from Lieberher since the first film). It may seem like nit-picking, but, for starters, McAvoy doesn’t seem physically big enough to be Bill...

Bill Denbrough is the most Stephen King-like character in the novel. For those who know what King looks like, it’s not hard to conceive an image of the author sitting in front of his typewriter back when he was writing IT in the late 1970s & early 1980s and imagining the character of Bill as a parallel version of himself.

King is also reasonably tall at 6’ 4”, whereas McAvoy is 5’ 7”. 

What’s even more ridiculous is that Jaeden Martell is also 5’ 7”. Martell may have been a little shorter when he filmed his scenes as Bill, but it’s hard to believe that he would have grown less than a foot going through adolescence on his way to becoming an adult!

There’s also a problem with McAvoy’s accent…

At times, he lapses into a softer version of his Hedwig voice from M. Night Shyamalan’s SPLIT (2016) and GLASS (2019) films. 

Given how important Bill Denbrough is to the story, McAvoy is miscast and the film suffers.

Jessica Chastain may have been an obvious choice to play the adult version of Beverly Marsh, but she can’t shine a light on Sophia Lillis, the actress who portrayed the younger version of the character in the first film. 

Again, this is a failure of writing...

Dauberman’s screenplay fails to capitalise on the connection between the young Beverly and the other Losers that was established by the end of the first film. This, in part, is another problem caused by the need to have the films tell the story in a linear fashion, but the screenplay makes little to provide connective links back to the first film to explain why, as adults, the Losers must return to Derry to finish what they started.

In the novel, the adult Losers have forgotten what happened to them as kids. It’s not until Mike, who has remained in Derry, contacts them to come back that they start to recollect their confrontation. The novel jumps back and forth between the kids’ story and the adults’ story, so the connection the young Losers make never feels like a gap of twenty-seven years until their return as adults.

In CHAPTER TWO, it feels like there has been a distinct passage of time and, with the exception of Mike Hanlon, the characters have no connection to each other. It’s only by way of flashbacks that Andy Muschietti achieves any relationship with the events of the first film. If it weren’t for those, this new film could have been a stand-alone story with any scary clown; it doesn’t need to be Pennywise.

Indeed, the treatment of Pennywise is also problematic…

King’s novel made the character work because he was able to create an elaborate backstory that delved into the creature’s existence.

In the second film, without that backstory and the restraint of the character’s use Muschietti achieved in the first film, Pennywise becomes a catch-all, generic plot device used in whatever form seems to be best suited for the uniformly-paced low impact scares Dauberman loads into the screenplay.

King’s book is not without its faults and one of them - the ending - is used as a running joke in the first half of IT: CHAPTER TWO. The film, however, fails to deliver an alternative that is any more compelling than the novel. The final confrontation between the Losers and Pennywise is, once again, far too generic. The denouement is hamstrung by the lack of insight the audience has about what makes Pennywise the creature that it is.

Adapting such a big book was always going to require two films and the logical structure was to make the kids story into the first movie and the adults story into the second movie. As it turns out, this approach delivered a really great first film, but has left the second film diminished. Without the kids to make it funnier and scarier, IT: CHAPTER TWO is a well made but by-the-numbers Horror film that has too few scares for fans and too much padding elsewhere justify its near three hour run time.

IT: CHAPTER TWO MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

It – Chapter Two - Wikipedia
It: Chapter Two (2019) - IMDb
​It: Chapter Two (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes

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