It Chapter 2

It Chapter 2 (2019)

Dir. Andy Muschietti

Written by Gary Dauberman, from half the novel It by Stephen King

Starring Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Bill Skarsgård

For some reason I really doubled down on the Stephen King for the start of this Chainsawnukah. I don’t know why, exactly; I mean, you’re not going to be able to watch 50+ horror movies in a single month without getting some Stephen King adaptations in there by sheer random chance, but I wasn’t really seeking them out, necessarily. And I wasn’t seeking IT CHAPTER 2 out, in particular; I’ve never read the book, was lukewarm at best about its predecessor, 2017’s IT CHAPTER 1, and was absolutely mystified by its titanic financial and popular success (it remains, by a substantial margin, the highest-grossing horror movie of all time). Its GOONIES-style “Losers Club” of spunky, potty-mouthed outcast kids endeared it to me somewhat (the youthful cast instill their characters with a lot of personality, even if they tend towards one-dimensional types) but ultimately I felt like the horror leaned too hard on flashy CG and ended up looking --and feeling—more like a busy, insubstantial comic book movie than a horror movie. Not really what I’m looking for this time of year. That, and, uh, pretty much everyone I talked to seems to be uniformly of the opinion that the “good part” of the novel was exclusively confined to the material with kids, and the associated material with the adults, 27 years later, was hot garbage. So I cannot say I had high hopes for CHAPTER 2.

Even going in with such low expectations, though, I emerged aghast at what a spectacularly empty 169 minutes this turns out to be. Every problem CHAPTER 1 had is amplified exponentially here, and virtually every bit of its charm is diminished. The movie is absolutely chock-a-block with self-defeating decisions, and nearly every one of which can be laid squarely at the feet of director Andy Muschietti (MAMA, CHAPTER 1) and screenwriter Gary Dauberman (ANNABELLE, working on his own this time, after previously adapting a script by Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga, who had been developing the film before Muschietti came on board). I mean, I suppose you could also easily blame King himself, from whose novel much of this dreck arises, but King at least didn’t bifurcate the story this way. As I understand it (and, having never read the novel, there remains a possibility that I actually don’t understand it) King essentially uses the “adult” material (set in 1985 in the book, and 2016 here) as a mystery framing device: we meet the adults at the outset of the novel, upon their return to Derry, Maine, 27 years after a summer that they mysteriously cannot remember, and the story of their childhood encounter with “It” in 1958 (1989 in the movie) unfolds gradually as they explore the town and recover their missing memory.

You can argue that some of the individual plot beats within this quest to recover their lost memory are pretty lousy (a sequence in which a giant statue of Paul Bunyan attacks Ritchie is a face-palming low point for the movie, and comes, of course, directly from King’s pen). But you cannot take issue with the novel’s nimble, parallel-timelines structure, a rather clever and narratively economical way of getting at King’s obvious goal in telling a story that straddles two decades: exploring the ways in which the past informs the present, how the people we were become the people we are. By sending his adult characters on a journey to re-discover their unhappy childhoods, he forces them to directly confront the unformed roots of the people they would become.

Alas, then, that separating the two parallel timelines into stubborn chronological order, as the filmmakers have done, makes absolutely dire wreckage out of King’s intent, and robs the entire plot of CHAPTER 2 of its basic reason for existence. Since the “adult” story was, in the book, basically a framing narrative --existing as a parallel echo of the “kids” story-- it naturally adopted a nearly identical form: the Losers club comes together, breaks apart, and finally reunites to confront the supernatural menace of “It” in its underground lair. When telling the two stories simultaneously, their similar structure is a logistical necessity. When telling them separately, however, it turns the whole second movie into a helpless retread of the first, made impossibly labored by the fact that we’re now an entire movie ahead of the characters. Dauberman, you see, has suicidally decided to retain the basic structure of a framing narrative, except that now it’s just framing a movie we’ve already seen and are now watching the sequel for. Rather than serving as a mysterious springboard for the tale, we now suffer through the now-adult characters agonizingly re-learning everything we saw them learn last time around.

If it wasn’t immediately obvious, we know from painful experience that turning framing stories into full movies is a bad idea. And this one is fucking 169 minutes! It’s like if they spent three hours and eighty million dollars making the famously flashback-padded SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 2. Except here’s the thing: nobody is going to tolerate an eighty million dollar film that’s fully 1/3 recycled footage, and yet the adult story manifestly exists only to facilitate flashbacks. So Muschietti and Dauberman’s solution is to have the adults flash back to new footage from the previous film’s time period. Which means in practice that, apparently, each child experienced exactly one additional haunting incident that wasn’t important enough to be included in its natural place somewhere in the middle of CHAPTER 1, and the adults must now flash back to that one specific and relatively minor incident to re-remember the events of the previous movie. Consequently CHAPTER 2 boasts a screaming psychotic structure which basically revolves entirely around a collection of out-takes from the first film, stapled to a bigger, louder, longer retread of CHAPTER 1’s already enervating lightshow finale. And did I mention it’s 169 fucking minutes?

Given all that, the film was probably doomed to failure no matter what, and yet, even so, it still manages to disappoint in other ways, though most remain tied to its fantastically counterproductive structure in one way or another. Chief among the remaining sins is its flagrant wasting of an excellent cast: if the movie has nothing else at all going for it (and it basically doesn’t), credit must be given for the spot-on casting of Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Jay Ryan, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, James Ransone and Andy Bean, each a pitch-perfect mirror for the specific idiosyncrasies projected by the younger originators of these roles (all of whom also appear in flashbacks here). Honest to god, for the first 40 minutes or so, the cast was so good that I almost thought there was some hope here; despite the mess of the structure, the film’s opening does at least an adequate enough job that, yoked to the fine performances of the adults, something of King’s original interest in examining the links between childhood and adulthood comes through. But those hopes are quickly dashed; after a promising and genuinely charming reunion dinner, the “Loser’s Club” gets split up again for separate time-wasting individual fetch quests, all of which serve yet again to hammer home the single personality trait each one was given in the previous film and let the corresponding adult vamp on that single personality trait* until it reaches the point of parody, at which point it is immediately forgotten and they each promptly lapse into interchangeable CG dolls to get tossed around by a giant poorly-designed computerized monster. Indeed, considering that the chief pleasure of CHAPTER 1 was almost entirely in its earnest depiction of these characters and their relationship, CHAPTER 2’s fanatical insistence on keeping them apart, and limiting their few interactions to businesslike exposition, seems downright sadistic, especially in light of the movie’s mammoth runtime.

You’ll notice, by the way, that so far I’ve been entirely silent on the subject of any actual genre content, which one might understandably expect would be the point, or at least a point, in a movie which is ostensibly about an evil clown (occasionally still Bill Skarsgård, though just as often a bunch of bland-looking ones and zero’s). One might understandably expect that, but not if one were Muschietti or Dauberman, who somehow manage to almost completely excise anything that could reasonably be called horror from the movie. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think the horror elements in CHAPTER 1 worked, but at least they were there, recognizable as attempts at scare scenes. Here, aside from a brief return to Beverly’s childhood home and a little vignette which finds Pennywise luring a victim under some bleachers, there’s almost nothing whatsoever which seems even intended to creep you out. In fact, Pennywise rarely even appears, an unforgivable waste of the tremendously effective work Skarsgård put into the character the first time around. There are a few feints at some kind of weirdo, possibly EVIL-DEAD inspired gross-out scenes (a dinner sequence where the food turns into grotesque insects, a lengthy vomiting gag), and a good bit of frantic, expensive-looking CGI slugfests (the Paul Bunyan sequence, the endless climax), but ultimately the feel of the movie is much closer to some kind of quippy sci-fi adventure than any kind of horror movie. The weightless, mood-killing CGI is a part of that (see my review of CHAPTER 1 for a lengthy commentary on that subject) but a bigger part is simply the tone and design of the movie. It feels tongue-in-cheek and insubstantial in a way that CHAPTER 1, for all its faults, did not, mechanically grinding through its plot without ever bothering to ask what the point of any of this might be.**

In fact, the movie that makes for the most fitting comparison isn’t even its predecessor, or a horror film at all: it’s AVENGERS: ENDGAME. The parallels between the two are genuinely striking: First, both were made under the weight of nearly unmatched financial ambitions (following, as they do, the two previous highest-grossing films in their respective genres) and have the bloated budgets and absurdly distended runtimes to match those ambitions. But the similarities run deeper than that: both movies also divide neatly into a rigid three act-structure, with both movies employing a remarkably similar three acts: The first needlessly splits our core group apart, entirely for the purpose of checking back in on them as they deal with the consequences of a shared tragedy from years ago, before laboriously re-assembling them. The second then takes our laboriously re-assembled group and splits them up again, sending each on a separate fetch-quest for a totemic object from their past, while at the same time studiously avoiding materially interacting with that past in any meaningful way. Finally, the third act brings everyone back together again for an endless, monotonous slugfest against a giant, poorly-designed CGI enemy who must be ironically defeated with a taste of his own medicine.*** Both movies feature spectacularly overqualified casts stuffed into roles which are essentially elaborate busywork given weight only by the affection for the characters we bring with us from past adventures, and both somehow divide an epic length into such easily digestible, bite-size pieces that the sum total barely feels like a meal. More like distractedly binging on junk food for a few hours; you may notice some slight discomfort by the end, but you’ll be hard-pressed to specifically remember what might have caused it.

The result is a movie which can’t exactly be called unendurably awful, not in the same month where I’m likely to see Jess Franco movies and shit. The cast is likeable, there are occasionally some weird monsters or something, and to its credit, it moves along with a spritely energy that means you barely notice its intimidating length (I’m told this is a characteristic it shares with the novel), at least until the endless, shapeless final battle. But considering the advantages it had at its disposal, in terms of budget, cast, and opportunity, I can’t imagine a way to frame it that doesn’t feel like a gut-churning letdown, even with expectations suitably lowered. I don’t know, it might have been a hopeless cause from the get-go, but it could still damn well have added up to more than this. This feels like a movie with no clear explanation for its own existence, other than, you know, they titled the first one CHAPTER 1. Fortunately, it seems like people actually caught on this time: it made just a little over half of what its predecessor did in cinemas. I mean, it was still wildly profitable, but maybe, just maybe, that’s enough of a drop to make producers think it might be worthwhile to deliver a genuine horror movie next time.

*With the exception of Mike, who is again treated as such an afterthought that they don’t even bother giving him the one trait. Even calling him “their black friend” feels like a more distinct characterization than he gets here, despite Isaiah Mustafa’s (Old Spice Commercials, Shadowhunters) game attempts to suggest his mental state is a bit shaky after all these years.

** In particular, the film’s decision to open with a brutal hate crime which is then never addressed or remarked upon again strikes me as an illustrative specimen of CHAPTER 2’s chronic lack of intent. I realize this sequence comes from the book, but in 2019 it’s way too emotionally charged to just toss off and forget about. Any sane person could see that if they just stopped and thought about it for a second, but somehow the filmmakers just marched on with it.  

*** King himself appears in a cameo as a character who complains about lousy endings to horror novels. I mean, ha ha, but instead of just throwing up your hands and admitting your ending is terrible, why not think of a better one? CHAPTER 2’s insecurity about its lame ending all but drips from the screen –and I mean, deserved so, it sucks—but, like JURASSIC WORLD, that just makes it even lamer. Look guys, you fucking shot it, you spent months on the CGI and shit. At least have the conviction to stand behind what you made.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2019 CHECKLIST!

For Richer or Horror

TAGLINE	You’ll Float Too [two?]. Weird to remind us of that, because actually no one floats here, they seem to have completely abandoned that idea from CHAPTER 1.
TITLE ACCURACY	More like part 2, but I’ll allow it.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Yes, from the 1986 novel by Stephen King
SEQUEL?	Yep, right there in the title.
REMAKE?	Arguably, since there is a well-remembered 1990 mini-series adapting the same material.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Clownsploitation?
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	At least Chastain and McAvoy. Oh, and Peter Bogdanovich has a cameo?
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Stephen King
NUDITY?	None (sorry, fans of the book’s original ending).
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	None
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Yes
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	One of Pennywise’s forms is of a zombie-type thing.
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	None
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	Yes, Pennywise transforms itself into a wide number of forms
VOYEURISM?	None
MORAL OF THE STORY	You need to have a better reason to make a 169-minute sequel than “there are some things in the book that we didn’t include in the first one.”