Just as I did for the first IT movie, I wanted to do a spoiler talk for this one as it usually helps me move on from the movie, so I can stop being paranoid lol but also because I just want to dig into it without worrying about ruining it for other people. I haven’t done a spoiler talk in a long time, they’re hard to do when writing, but I had to do one for this. I already did a spoiler free review which you can read in the link below.
Movie Review: It Chapter Two (2019)
This will probably be long by the way. Just saying.
The Story
It’s been 27 years since the events of the first film. Our Losers have all moved out of Derry, except for Mike and all lead successful lives. I think it makes sense that they’re all successful because they were all smart and resourceful kids and it fits right in with forgetting how weird, bad or traumatic their experiences might have been. I would like an IT 1.5 movie so I can see their actual teenage years lol, all the kids are old enough to do it, or do it in another few years and do it then lol. Anyway, here is where all the Losers start out in the film.
- Bill is a successful horror writer who can’t seem to write good endings for his books. It’s a running joke that everyone hates them lol. He’s married to an actress who is a redhead btw.
- Beverly runs a fashion empire with her abusive husband.
- Richie is a successful stand-up comic, which I saw a reviewer say was “on the nose” because Bill Hader, but Richie was the funny one, so it makes sense.
- Eddie is a risk analyst which is hilarious but also makes sense lol and he’s married to a woman like his mother (WHO IS PLAYED BY THE SAME ACTRESS AS HIS MOTHER lol)
- Ben has a successful architecture business. I wish we saw more of this instead of him being “the historian” in the first one. He could have still had that scene in the library and looked at that book in order to see the headless kid. He could have been looking at the History of Derry because he wanted to see what the architecture used to be like or something. I still think that was a weird choice.
- Stanley, well, I don’t know what Stan does, the movie doesn’t tell you but according to the Wiki, he’s a firm accountant and he’s married.
- Mike is the Derry Librarian which considering his personality from the first one, I wouldn’t think that’s what he’d do. I just wish they didn’t take away his Historian plot in the first one and give it to Ben because it just seems like a weird transition for him.
So, Mike, hears about body parts being found by the river and bridge, so he goes to investigate, and he spots a piece of a red balloon and sees “Come Home” written in blood on the bridge. So, it’s confirmed that Pennywise is back and doing his thing, so he calls up all the losers. Everyone has a bad reaction to the news, but they all come back except for Stanley. I’ll get into that a little later.
Everyone returns, they have a reunion but Pennywise scares all of them and they don’t want to stay but Mike is determined. He manages to get Bill to listen to him, he thinks that if Bill’s on board then the others will fall in line… which is true lol. He shows Bill, by drugging him, about the Ritual of Chud to defeat Pennywise. Everyone then goes on “spirit quests” to find tokens to sacrifice.
- Bill gets Georgie’s boat
- Beverly gets her “January Embers poem”
- Ben has the yearbook page Beverly signed
- Mike has the rock that Beverly threw at Henry Bowers to save him (it’s what brought the Losers to Mike lol)
- Eddie’s inhaler
- Richie gets a token from the arcade
- And Bill finds the shower caps Stanley put in their clubhouse to keep spiders away.
They all end up meeting at the Niebolt house to stop Bill from going in himself after Pennywise killed a kid in front of him. They have a moment and then go inside where shenanigans ensue in the house. Good stuff happens here. Then, they all go down in the sewers and the last… 45 minutes maybe is in the sewers. They do the ritual, it doesn’t work because Mike lied about the ritual. I guess they would have to die for it to officially work. He says that the Natives only died because they didn’t believe it would work but if the Losers believed then no one would have to die. Still didn’t work. Pennywise is now a giant Clown-Spider creature and he’s going after everyone. They all run off, some of them go through more horrors, particularly Bill, Ben and Beverly. This is also when Beverly discovers Ben is the one who wrote the poem and that he loves her. Bill faces his brother and his younger self; a great scene and he faces his guilt in the face and overcomes it.
Eddie and Richie have some funny moments together. Everyone overcomes their scares and Richie saves Mike from being killed by Pennywise by “rock war”!
“Wanna play truth or dare? Here’s a truth, you’re a sloppy bitch! Yipikaye mother f…” and BOOM DEADLIGHTS! Richie is in his trance but it’s different for when he did it to Beverly, Richie starts bleeding and it seems like the intent is to kill this time. Eddie comes out, sees Richie and uses the iron gate… piece? lol to throw into giant Pennywise’s mouth, because he believed the iron could kill monsters, just like Beverly told him to believe it could. Just when everyone starts to rejoice, Pennywise stabs Eddie.
They say the best way to kill him now is to make him smaller so they could effectively fight him. Bill, Ben, Mike and Bev try to get him to go through one of the small tunnels, but he cuts them off so then they basically roast him to size lol. Mike says to Bev “there’s more than one way to make someone small” “make him think that he does” or something like that. Pennywise laughs “Me? Small!? I’m the eater of worlds!” Mike says, “Not to us, you’re just a clown” and he like freaks out for a moment. So, they basically just call him all the things he’s turned into to scare them “An old lady”, “an impostor”, repeating “clown”. It’s like he can’t think straight so he keeps turning into the things they’re calling him. We even hear Eddie shout “LEPER!”, Richie joins in the fight, as Pennywise gets smaller, Richie rips off the claw that stabbed Eddie and Bev’s face in that scene makes me laugh. Pennywise is now super small, scared and weak. Mike reaches in and pulls out his heart, they all crush it together. They go back to Eddie, he’s gone so now they must make it out of the house before everything crumbles. There is no actual way they make it out though… I mean it was falling around them fast, but they make it out (ya know movies) and the Niebolt house is sucked into the void and is gone. Poor Richie is still shouting Eddie’s name. They end up at the Quarry and once again Beverly jumps into the water first. They clean off, Richie cries so they have a sweet moment where they just hold each other. Richie makes a joke about his glasses, everyone dives to find them, and Ben and Bev have a moment where they kiss. Bill sees, he smiles and looks away. They walk back through town, look at their reflection in store glass and it’s their younger selves and then it cuts back to the younger versions after they defeated Pennywise the first time.
Everyone goes back to their lives, Mike calls Bill to check on him and to tell him about Stanley’s letter.
- Bill seems happier and more confident in himself and he’s gotten past his writer’s block. I do wish they showed if he was still with his wife or not. It didn’t seem like they have a bad relationship, but I do think part of him married her because she reminded him of Beverly, even though he probably didn’t know why. I mean, she has red hair, a fiery spirit and he even says at the beginning “Why can’t you be the woman I want you to be” and he tries to fix it and I was like “oooo, he wishes she was Beverly but doesn’t know he wants that since he probably doesn’t remember her”. But we don’t know if things are better with them, if they’re still together. I’m not sure his ending in the book but I am aware in the miniseries, he does like ride off with her on his bike or something lol. Maybe it’s a deleted scene. I just wanted to see her in the background or something lol.
- Beverly and Ben are together with his dog and his fancy boat. I think he asks her if she’s okay or happy or something and she’s like “Yes, very” and it’s all cute and what not.
- Richie ends by re-carving the R+E initials on the kissing bridge, symbolizing that he’s at least come to terms with his sexuality and that he did love Eddie.
- Mike calls Bill to check on him and tell him about the letter from Stanley. He tells Bill he’s leaving Derry to find his own way, now that everything is over. Not sure what he’s going to do but Mike Hanlon deserves happiness.
They’re victorious but this time they remember everything, and Mike has a great line, “maybe we remember because there’s more good things to remember instead of the bad things” or something like that and that really sums things up. It’s bittersweet though, because Stanley and Eddie both died, but it does a nice job at rounding out what each character had to struggle with and where they are now. Everyone has at least a more secure form of peace and happiness.
Characters
I think this time around the film is more of an ensemble than it was in the first one. Bill and Beverly were the leads in the group but here, I don’t think there is a clear lead. They all kind of get the same amount of love. I’m not going to go into everyone though, just some things I might have noticed that I didn’t include in my regular review.
- James McAvoy as Bill Denbrough. I have seen people say that when he stutters, it seems like he’s channeling Hedwig (Split & Glass). I don’t see it and I loved him in both those movies (even though Glass is meh). I think he does the stutter well. I think while Bill isn’t the “lead” as he was in the first one, he has a lot of solo moments where he shines, and his character arc gets a lot of development. He has three distinct scenes where we see this. Again, James is masterful as always and I did always manage to find him in the group even if he wasn’t in the forefront. Also, it seemed like Pennywise really had it out for him and I wish we got to see them interact more. Yes, we have the sewer drain and the fun house but Pennywise torments him in that moment and that’s it, I feel like, when Bill says “I hate you” after the sewer drain that Pennywise would have laughed or said “I hate you too” mockingly or something. Or the Fun house would have been a great moment to see Pennywise really dig it in, but I guess by eating the kid in front of Bill and Bill seeing that he couldn’t do anything to stop him or save the kid was enough…
- Bill Hader as Richie Tozier. Finn Wolfhard suggested Bill Hader when they were asked in interviews who they’d like to play them as adults, and it happened. That’s dope lol. So, his arc deals with accepting who he is and allowing himself to feel comfortable that way. Richie has been confirmed gay in this film and that he liked Eddie. Being that I am on Tumblr and other social media things, I have seen people say that about him in the first one. I never quite got that impression. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, I just didn’t pick up on it. They were just two fast talking kids who roasted each other, that’s what kids do, so I didn’t even think about it. I haven’t read the book either to see if that story element was there. Thinking about it, if they decided to confirm Richie’s sexuality, then I can see where in the first they could pull from just as if they didn’t reveal it at all, I wouldn’t have noticed. But I think it was a nice addition to his character and it’s not done in a way that would make you roll your eyes. At least I didn’t. On my second viewing, I did notice how he was extra attentive to Eddie, like in the restaurant, he calls his name. Bill Hader is great though, truly great.
- Isaiah Mustafa as Mike Hanlon. He stayed in Derry and became the librarian. I really want to know how that happened considering his role in the first one. He was part of the group, but he was a last addition and had such a minor role. It was really sad. His role is much larger here, which I appreciated, and I liked his “frantic/madman” nature. He was trying to get this done, he needed his friends to believe. He almost had a childish quality to him. I really liked the moments with him, and Bill and I would have been interested in seeing them team up more. He and James had great chemistry. They need to be in another movie together.
- Andy Bean as Stanley Uris. Sooo you can’t really talk about Stanley without spoiling him but he’s the last one to get the call from Mike and he commits suicide. His face when he answers shows he’s terrified. He sits in the tub and he slits his wrists. I feel bad for him because the look on his face is very… sad. We learn that Beverly has seen each of their deaths in her dreams every night, so she knew about Stanley’s death just not when it would happen exactly. I wish, we got to know what everyone else’s death would have been because I’m curious… anyway, I feel bad for Andy Bean lol because he’s in all the press stuff, but he can’t really answer any questions about his character because it would spoil it. He just always looks like he’s chillin in the back during interviews. BUT the ending is where he really gets his moment. Bill gets a letter from Stanley, as does the others, and Stanley narrates his letter. He talks about why he did what he did, he was afraid, and he knew he wouldn’t be much help and they couldn’t defeat IT if they weren’t unified, so he removed himself from that equation to ensure their victory. It was a lovely letter, very sad and I get it.
- Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Dancing Clown / “It”. I do agree with other reviews that it seems like Pennywise, as the clown, as Bill Skarsgård, isn’t prevalent as much as he could have been, but I think that’s okay. He’s supposed to be scary and if you see too much of him then it’s no longer scary… for those who get scared. I also love the fact that he’s pissed… clearly. Whenever he’s Pennywise and he encounters a Loser, he’s angry. With Beverly he has this whole set up in her house which was intricate. When he first encounters Richie, he really teases him with his inner struggles. As I said, I think he had it out for Bill the most, because he torments him. He put Georgie out there to lure Bill to the drain, he threatened Bill with that kid’s skateboard, and he killed that kid in front of Bill. I mean, torment. I really wish that after Pennywise ate that kid in front of Bill and the lights came up that it was still glass instead of a mirror and Pennywise could be standing there, with a smile or something. I feel like there should have been another exchange between them. I guess Bill overcoming his guilt was enough. I just think that Pennywise’s scares for the Losers could have been more… with the intent on really getting them. In the sewer he does more to try and kill them, but I feel like he should have been doing that from the beginning. That’s just my thoughts.
The Scares.
I love how they said this movie has way more scares and is scarier than the first one, but I don’t agree. The first one is much scarier, at least I wasn’t as bothered during the sequel as I was during the first one even though I love the first one. Each Loser has their solo scares but then they also have scares together. So, everyone has their group scares which is in the Chinese restaurant and then when they’re in the sewers and it’s just scary all around lol.
- Bill: So, Bill has the Sewer Scene, the Fun House (I’ll go into details about those later) and the moment in his basement where he watches Georgie talk to young Bill about the night he died. It was shared that Bill pretended he was sick because he didn’t want to play, and he felt guilty and Georgie just shouts, “You lied, and I died!” Bill tries to talk to his younger self but sees he’s controlling Georgie like Pennywise did in the first one, like a puppet. Then of course, Georgie spins around and his face is gross. Bill then drowns him. He and his younger self have a talk, his younger self tries to kill him, but it doesn’t work so then Bill shoots his younger self in the head, his way of letting go of his guilt and then younger Bill turns into a creepy Pennywise face. Bill goes back into the water and comes back to Pennywise’s lair. Here, I think it’s important to note that I don’t fault Bill for what happened to Georgie and I don’t think he should be condemned for it. Sure, he’s going to feel bad because he didn’t want to play and he couldn’t protect his brother, but that doesn’t make him a bad person. He was a kid. When you don’t want to do something with someone, people often make up excuses that aren’t the truth. Let’s not act like Bill is this horrible person and should feel bad because it was revealed he pretended to be sick. Now, the only problem I have with this reveal is that there wasn’t any indication that he was faking in the first one, which I guess is the point but I wouldn’t have questioned it as much if it seemed like he was faking it then. It might have been an afterthought which is the problem, but not the reveal itself.
- Beverly: She goes to her old house to find her poem. An old lady is living there. She lets Bev in, and while Bev is in the house, you see shots of the old lady watching her from down the hall and then she would walk away doing some weird disjointed movements. The lead up is all good stuff. They have a talk; the woman flashes her chest and you see she has some weird skin issues going on. Bev sees pictures of the woman as a little girl with her father who looks an awful lot like Pennywise and then the woman is in her dark kitchen and says “I’ve always been daddy’s little girl. ARE YOU DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL BEVERLY?” and you just hear heavy footsteps and she comes out the kitchen and I think I laughed a little. She looked ridiculous. The CGI really didn’t do any favors here, I was expecting it to be scarier than it was. She chases Beverly around the house. Oh, the giant lady is naked too. Bev tries to escape but the door is locked. Down the hall, another door opens, and a man is in there, he talks to her and he starts putting on white makeup and rips his face open to mimic Pennywise’s red lines and he says some words and Bev escapes. She also has the scene in the bathroom with the blood and while she’s locked in there, the door keeps being pushed open by people who have scared her or affected her in the past. It’s a pretty good scene.
- Richie: In a flashback, we see Richie get scared by the Paul Bunyon statue in the park after he was chased out of the arcade by Bowers. He also is the only one in the solo scares who Pennywise graces with his presence as an adult.
- Eddie: He goes to the pharmacy, he goes into the basement and we get a flashback of him as a kid. He hears his mother calling for him. The basement is all weird, dark and creepy. It has blood drips and needles. His mother is trapped to a standing gurney and the leper is chained behind a curtain. It keeps getting closer though. It eventually affects the mom with… grossness by sticking its tongue down her throat. Gross. Little Eddie runs off lol. Adult Eddie faces the leper, but he almost gets the best of him, but the leper cheats by throwing up on him and disappears lol.
- Ben: He doesn’t get an adult solo scare until the end when the clubhouse tried to swallow him up. He gets a flashback in the school, where Bev shows up, they talk, he tries to kiss her, she calls him a “fatty” or something and she sets herself on fire and chases him down the hallway. He hides in his locker, he pulls out the yearbook page and Pennywise is in the locker with him. He escapes though.
- Mike: We don’t see any scares for him. We see a flashback when he was a kid and his parents died in the fire but that’s about it. He does face off with Henry in the library but nothing that is scary because he’s no longer scared as he tells Pennywise at the end.
The Fight
At the end, we get of course, their final battle with Pennywise and it’s much longer than it was in the first one. The others find Bill as he’s ready to kill Pennywise and he has a speech and he’s stuttering a lot, which juxtaposes his speech in front of the house in the first one where he doesn’t stutter at all. I think it shows just how upset and scared he was as an adult compared to when he was ready as a kid. They go inside the house and end up getting split up. Richie, Bill and Eddie and Mike, Beverly and Ben. Pennywise starts carving “Home at last” on Ben’s stomach, bringing that H for Henry Bowers back and young Stan’s head turned into a spider creature trying to attack the other three lol. Eddie is so scared that he just stands in the corner while Spider-Stan attacks Richie, Bill is trying to pull him off, Ben comes in the clutch and kills Spider-Stan or stuns him at least. Bill then goes to shout at Eddie, about people dying and him not helping. I saw someone say that Bill wouldn’t have done that, and I disagree. He had every right to do that. He remembered his brother died, Dean was killed in front of him and he’s trying to save his friend and his other friend is cowering. Don’t get me wrong, Eddie had a right to be scared too and when Eddie said, “I was so scared, please don’t be mad Bill,” Bill’s face was like… okay, we gotta stick together and he says, “Don’t let him have that, that’s what he wants.”
So, I told y’all how the way they beat Pennywise is that they roasted him to size… lol yes, they did. I think they do other stuff in the book, I’m pretty sure they do something in the miniseries, but I get why they did this. I mean, sometimes you must face your fear in order to make it no longer scary. I mean, yes, they kicked the crap out of him in the first one, but they only wounded him so perhaps it wouldn’t work that way this time? I mean, who’s to say? I might feel like it’s an underwhelming ending to this crazy killer clown, but I like the fact that they beat him by making him afraid of them. They beat him at his own game.
The Love Triangle.
Bill & Beverly: Okay, so if you remember from the first film, Bill and Beverly like each other. It’s clear right from the start when he sees her again, and she’s walking towards them in slow motion and Bill’s all dopey eyes and what not. I thought it was cute and Jaeden Martell and Sophia Lillis had great chemistry. A lot of the time, they were together, or they stood near each other, or they had each other’s backs. She was willing to fight Pennywise with Bill and was on his side. He also liked her. They shared little looks and what not. SO, now in this one, 27 years later, they’re both married. Bill is married to a redheaded actress and Beverly is in an abusive relationship. When they all return, they share a few looks, they have a private conversation at the restaurant, they share a very nice kiss, like their last kiss we see in the first movie. They also show us flashbacks of them riding a bike together, it’s cute. So, we see that they have feelings beyond the first movie. During their kiss, Bill does pull away which could mean- “We’re both married, we can’t do this” OR “why are you kissing me when they’re kids dying and a killer clown out there” lol. James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain do have chemistry. I feel like I wanted them to be together in the end, but I understand why they’re not, at least on Bill’s end.
Ben & Beverly: In the first one, we are aware that Ben has a crush on Bev from the moment she signs his year book. He often looks at her, especially if she and Bill share a moment. He writes her the cute poem and everything. Beverly thinks Bill wrote it because she likes him and he likes her, I don’t think she even thinks that Ben wrote the poem. So, in this one, the Losers must go and grab tokens that meant something to them as children to sacrifice to take down Pennywise and Ben’s is the yearbook page that Beverly signed. It was the only thing he didn’t forget because he took it with him when he left Derry. Throughout the movie, he would give her looks, whenever she and Bill were off together or talking, he would look all jealous and stuff. Well, lol more like longing. When Bev tells him, she thought Bill wrote the poem, he was all like “Bev nooo, I wrote it” lol but he doesn’t say anything. Later, when they’re throwing their stuff into the fire, Bev tosses in the poem (it meant a lot) and then Ben tosses in the yearbook page and she realizes it was the one she signed and she’s all like
lol. Then later, everyone gets forcibly split up. Bev gets thrown back into the bathroom stall from when she was a kid and the stall starts filling up with blood. Ben gets thrown into the clubhouse he built, and it starts filling up with dirt. I guess he could hear her screaming and while he’s sinking, he’s calling out to her as she’s terrified. He then starts reciting the poem which gives her life and they save each other. They share a moment and at the end, they end up together.
So, I have a problem with how this was handled. I don’t mind that Ben and Beverly got together in the end, but my problem is that we never got to see Beverly really reciprocate those feelings. I never like when two people (A&B) like the same person (C) and C thinks A wrote them a love letter or a poem when really B wrote the poem but C clearly likes A anyway and A likes them back, the poem just helped to further those feelings, but then somewhere down the line C finds out B wrote the poem and now C is in love with B… I hate that because most of the time, B & C don’t really share that kind of relationship, at least not that the audience sees. It’d be different if Beverly and Ben flirted more or had more than a friendly connection because while Ben clearly likes her, I never thought that Beverly clearly liked him or even felt the same. For Bill, yes but not for Ben. I just don’t like how that was handled. I rolled my eyes hard when we see Ben and Ben on a boat together at the end. I joked “Oh you like him now because he’s hot lol”.
Favorite Scenes
I particularly love the Chinese Restaurant scene because this is the first time everyone is back together and they’re remembering each other and their history and just having a good time. It’s the first scene where you really see the adult actors sitting in these characters we’ve come to love thanks to the young actors. Then things get serious when they talk about why Stanley isn’t there, and Mike starts talking about why he brought them back. Everyone acts all funny when he starts talking about Pennywise, like they forgot why Mike called them back though he literally told them over the phone. Anyway lol, they start talking about fear and how they didn’t remember things until they came back. They open their fortune cookies and get a message “Guess Stanley couldn’t cut it” which prompts the cookies to start cracking open revealing little gross creatures. It’s so great because everyone is freaking out and I love the part where Ben is kind of hiding behind Eddie (mind you, he’s much taller and muscular lol) and he’s swatting at the flying creature lol. In the fish tank are floating heads and Bill and Mike both freak out. Then Mike starts hitting the table with a chair “IT’S NOT REAL!” Man, that’s a great scene. It’s weird but not scary.
There’s also this kid “Dean” who says, “Hey Richie, the fun’s just beginning” and he gives a creepy smile which causes Richie to shout at him thinking it’s a Pennywise thing and it’s just a kid who’s a fan of his stand up. This kid is important for later.
The Sewer Drain is during the series of moments where each Loser goes their own way to find their tokens to sacrifice for the ritual. Bill finds his bike in an antique shop (Stephen King cameo), he goes off riding and comes across his old house, where he sees Dean on the law. He also rides past the drain where Georgie was taken. We get a flashback with young Bill demanding to know from Pennywise WHY he took Georgie, he’s screaming and crying, and he does a great job. “WHY HIM!”. He starts to walk away and Pennywise says “Why? Because you weren’t there.” Gosh it’s so good. Then we cut back to adult Bill and he starts to walk away but then he hears Georgie’s voice “Billy, I’m still here, help me” and he’s like “Omg, Georgie??” and he moves closer to the drain, and he sees Georgie’s hands reaching for him, with the boat,
the music here is beautiful by the way. Of course, Bill reaches for him while Georgie is saying “Help me! He’s coming!” and Bill is reaching into the sewer, trying to grab his hands, and he’s like pretty far in that thing. It’s shocking really. Then of course, a crazy hand grabs his arm and tries to pull him into the sewer and a bunch of kid hands start grabbing him too. Almost his entire upper body was pulled into that thing lol, I was bruh, you are a whole adult, how can you even fit? It’d be different if Pennywise made it bigger to be able to pull Bill in. If he did do that, then I needed to see that lol. But Bill manages to escape and now he has the boat in hand too. “I hate you!” he’s crying. Man, James McAvoy is great. I love him. Also, the kid who lives in his house, Dean, talks to him and Bill shouts at him to not go near the sewer and to tell his parents to leave town. That kid was having a bad two days lol. He got yelled at by two adults lol.
Now, the Fun House is also a great sequence. They show a bit of it in the trailer. Bill goes back to the Inn after his sewer sequence. He and Beverly kiss. He pulls back, I’m not sure if it’s because their kiss isn’t the same as when they were kids, or if he remembered they’re both married. I’m not sure but his expression was interesting. Let me know what you think his expression meant in that scene. The moment is cut short when a skateboard comes down the staircase. Bill recognizes it as the one Dean rode on his way to the carnival, there’s blood on the bottom and it says, “Won’t be there for him either?”. It prompts Bill to run off. So, he takes off to go find Dean and he sees him go into the fun house at the Carnival Canal Days. Bill goes after him, he almost gets taken out by those swinging clowns lol.
He then gets to the hall of mirrors and he sees the kid and tries to run to him but of course runs into glass. He squeezes through a narrow passage, claustrophobia anyone? And he gets to the kid, runs into the glass again and it’s clear the kid is boxed in. During Bill’s search, you can see Pennywise also going through the area. The music they play for when he walks by is great lol. Dean is like “What are you doing here? Why are you following me?” and Bill stutters he’s trying to help. Then you hear a squeaking noise and we all turn to see Pennywise at the other side. It’s literally the worst noise ever.
So, Bill pleads with him, while Pennywise starts bashing his head against the glass. Asking him to take him instead. “I’m here now take me” but Pennywise is a little jerk and he gives his little smile, this kid is screaming by the way, and then he breaks through the glass and eats the kid right in front of Bill, who was trying to break the glass on his side. It’s a horrible moment and you really want Bill to succeed save the kid even though we all know he isn’t going to be able to. Now he’s even more invigorated to stop Pennywise since there’s another kid he lost, and he feels even more guilty.
These scenes are so great. The first really establishes our group and their friendship while also kick starting what we all came here for. A rematch of the Losers Club vs Pennywise. The other two are my favorites because I really like what they did with Bill. I keep seeing that people think he isn’t the focus as much as he was in the first one and while I agree with that in ways, I don’t think that means he didn’t have anything to do. The sequel was way more of an ensemble minus Stanley compared to the first one where Bill and Beverly were the leads. I just think Bill is stuck in the same place he was in the first one in his crushing guilt. His arc throughout the film is coming to terms with what happened and finally realizing it wasn’t his fault and it never was. No matter how many times Pennywise tries to make it seem so. Plus, I love James McAvoy so I might be a little biased, but he did so well in both those scenes, I really felt for him both times.
The Opening Scene
So, I feel like maybe I should mention this since it’s such a big deal. When the movie starts, we get a flash of young Beverly floating in the deadlights and a wonderful transition into the Canal Days Carnival. There are two guys on a date at this carnival. This group of weird looking kids/young adults who start to bother them. Adrian says something smart then he’s pulled away by his boyfriend. While they’re on the bridge, the hooligans come back and basically beat them up, especially Adrian and they dump him into the river. The boyfriend goes to the riverbank to save him, but we get this great shot of Adrian looking at someone on the edge.
It’s Pennywise, and he helps Adrian out of the water. The boyfriend sees that Adrian’s been helped, and then Pennywise takes a chunk out of Adrian’s side. He’s dead dead.
Soooooo, I don’t know if this happens in the book. I heard it does, but I think it’s important to note that this kind of thing happens in Derry. This scene is show Number ONE: The evil and hatred in Derry is amplified due to Pennywise’s presence. This is talked about in the first one and shown considering how people seem so “over it” or they just don’t care. I mean, kids keep disappearing and no one is looking for them, outside of Betty Ripsom’s mother. NUMBER TWO: Pennywise was in hibernation for 27 years and was probably slowly healing and weak due to his last battle with the Losers, so he was probably super hungry. He isn’t limited to just kids, he can scare them and play with his food to make them taste better. Adrian was already hurt, thanks to those hooligans so he was easy prey. I mean… I don’t think it meant to offend anyone, that’s just how it is in this town. That’s just my two cents on that.
The Runtime.
This movie is 169 minutes or about 2 hours and 50 minutes long. I mean, it’s long but that didn’t bother me at all because I can handle long movies (except Endgame apparently because I went to the bathroom during the movie BOTH TIMES I SAW IT lol) but I read there is an even longer cut and I want to see the entire movie, especially the stuff that was cut. I feel like there is a ton of things that were left out. It might feel long to others but that didn’t bother me. I want to see the first one and second one in one big 6-hour long film lol.
Overall
The first one is still better but this is a nice follow up and a nice conclusion. There could have been better elements, particularly the CGI and maybe some storytelling elements, like how for a good chunk of the middle, the formula repeats itself, but I think it’s still a good film.
Okay so that’s my Spoiler Talk on It Chapter Two.
Let me know your thoughts below! Was there something I missed you wanted to talk about? Say it in the comments!
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Speak Now Storyteller 