The Magic is Gone

Rating: 3/10 (9 September 2019)

I want to make one thing perfectly clear before I get into why this film doesn't work at all. I loved It: Chapter One. You're gonna see a lot of pieces on Letterboxd over the course of this month go on about how the first film was never that good and that's just not something I'm going to buy into. As far as I'm concerned, the first film was a masterpiece and, in my opinion, the best film of 2017. I was so excited for the 2nd installment (I'm of the opinion that the 2nd half of the book is actually better than the first), that I opted to see it in IMAX instead of a regular theater (My first IMAX viewing since I was 5 years old) So when I tell you this is a really bad film, understand that I left that IMAX feeling like someone had died. I was the last person who wanted to be the bearer of bad news.
Not everything fails. This is, after all, a follow-up fona great film in my opinion. Almost all of the acting is quite excellent. Jessica Chastain as Beverly absolutely steals the show. You can tell she really studied the Hell out of this role as she captures a lot of the subtle facial acting choices of Lillis in this first movie. She's strong, she's fierce, she's funny, she's sympathetic. I have friends who are only interested in seeing this film for her performance and they likely won't be disappointing. Isaiah Mustafa is also fantastic as Mike Hanlon. Chapter Two gives Mike a lot more to do and definitely makes him into a more well developed and rounded character than the first film and Mustafah really helps to mold him into a rather mysterious, wise presence. James Ransone is practically a clone of an older Jack Dylan Grazer, in both appearance and vocal delivery. In fact, only one actor in the film seems to deliver a bad performance in my eyes, who we'll get to later.
The aesthetic is impressive as well. From the stunning and shocking practical effects used for the film's wide variety of monsters to the pleasing cinematography (IT Chapter Two's clever use of Dutch angles in particular really stuck with me) Muschieti (clearly a talented filmmaker, despite this film's failure) has a wonderful visual eye that's fully on display here.
Remember earlier when I said that only one actor gives a bad performance in this film? Unfortunately, that actor is the lead. James McAvoy, despite being a great actor, seems to completely phone it in as Bill Denbrough. His performance seems disinterested and devoid of passion. It's like he out so much into his earlier performance this year in Glass that he had nothing to give to his performance as Bill. It doesn't help that Chapter Two's characterization of Bill comes off as creepy and possessive ("Why can't you be the woman I want you to be?" he tells his own wife.)
It Chapter Two is possibly the worst edited film I've seen in theaters. That includes both Justice League and The Snowman. I'm not exaggerating an ounce when I say that nearly a third of the movie is just deleted scenes from the first film used as flashbacks. Almost every single one of these scenes don't exist in this cut of the movie for the purposes of character development or exploration of theme, but for more random spooky clown scenes. Not only are they unnecessary, not only are they lazy ways to make a rather small and unsubstantial film feel artificially epic, they're incredibly distracting and actually end of removing a lot of development from the adult cast. Ben's scene with Beverly in particular really rubbed me the wrong way. It's funny how Beverly's most in-character scene in Chapter Two is when she's actually Pennywise in disguise.
So much of the film seems aimless. It will set up certain aspects like a child in danger who reminds Bill of his late brother or an ancient Native American ritual of faith and friendship used to banish Pennywise and then go absolutely nowhere with them. Said child dies anticlimactically and the ritual that the film spent so much of its plodding, meaningless runtime ends up failing.
Ideas that the previous film set up are equally wasted. I was very curious to see where Beverly and Ben's romance would go in Chapter Two, one of my favorite love stories in literature. Sadly, it ends up having the passion of 2 sock puppets rubbing against each other. The attraction begins and ends at "Beverly loves poetry, Ben wrote a great poem, now they're gonna kiss." Maybe the film could have given their romance more depth and believability had it spent less time on unnecessary and pointless scare scenes, but that's neither here nor there.
Not only is It: Chapter Two a bad movie, it's a morally offensive one. The brutality and pointless nature of the film's beginning homophobic hate crime is horrible to witness. Fans of the book will argue it's merely being accurate to the source material, but with all of the pathos and humanity It Chapter Two removed from King's masterpiece, what made this one scene an absolute must to include? Don't even get me started on the film treating Eddie's suicide as a good thing because he was "the weakest of the group" and couldn't weigh down the Losers Club (I'm not even making that up, that's the exact terminology the film uses)
I never thought that a film could be released this year as disappointing and potential shattering than Pet Sematary, but It: Chapter Two takes the cake. An insult to its predecessor, an insult to the book and an insult to King as a storyteller.