IT Evolution

Rating: 8/10 (8 September 2019)

33 years I've waited...
..Since reading the book in 1986, then again twice over the decades.
The 1990 miniseries was kitschy treat, making an icon of Tim Curry's Pennywise and introducing stubborn non-reading retards to a slice of the wondrous freaked-out cosmic horror hidden within the novel's 1100 pages; at school I was failed in a term exam for an essay on IT by a teacher who labelled it 'Satanic drivel', yet professed to never having read it :)) Yes, the world's full of them...
2017 IT was a surprise - a realy great surprise as it delivered sometihng akin but deliciously different to the original adaption. Trouble was...
They created a monster all over again. In this age of connectivity, IT - Pennywise - became a juggernaut of cultural reference, almost ubiquitous in everyday lives, instantly recognisable to multi-millions of consumers however invested in the actual story they were. He was the original killer clown and he had returned to take over the world.
So how the hell do you conjour a second part to the tale, remaining faithful to the source material and somehow incorporate this all-pervading pop-culture icon without it becoming a blandishment of clown-memes?
Well, they certainly went for an angle, and I commend the reach - further than I thought they would go but not as far as I would have liked.
Pennywise was never going to have the same chiller-killer impact of 2017 so the move towards lashings of dark humour infused with the shlock-horror was a brave one and very meta - recognising the part that clown has come to play in the consumer psyche.
So we get something that echoes the original Evil Dead series for sardonic black comedy and still manages to hold together the book's struggle of mere humans battling cosmic evil.
Most admirably, they managed to make it entertaining over the 3-hour run-time.
Pennywise gets a slew of great moments and each adult actor is given the chance to inhabit the grown-up Loser to the best of their abilities; and note that they all do a splendid job.
The effects are absolutely fine - lol at the facebook-smart intellectuals who parrot the 'poor CGI' line; you gotta ask why none of those creative geniuses didn't step in and offer their services to save the day. They'll be sat on the couch with the 'look at me, I'm not scared' crew when the DVD comes out.
Some people just don't get it, or IT...
The dread of IT was always beyond impactful first-level boogeyman frights - as soon as the book opened up the exposition into realms of ancient inter-dimensional cosmic horror I was blown away. Stephen King, brilliantly drug-addled, took us on a trip into primeval darkness, from the unsettling events in a small American town to the abyssal terrors of the universe itself. The reach was epic and they made a grab for that here too, almost fulfilling the wishes of many who wanted the deep lore, the trippy light-fantastic backstory revelations of the novel.
So very nearly, but this cultural monster had to deliver at the box-office, had to sate the demands of the casual jump-scare popcorn junkie and so the compromise was reached; entertaining, chilling, sentimental and twisted, comedic and vicious, with a shot of lore to add some depth.
They managed to keep a lot of the plates spinning and deserve praise for never allowing the span of the film to lapse into dreary segments of character development or predictability - there's always something round the corner, even if you're expecting it, you're still guessing it. I though the pacing was excellent for the most part.
Ultimately, you can criticise IT chapter 2 for its level of personal-expectation fulfillment - e.g was the end true-form reveal a cop-out, a compromise or a clever concept? - but you can't criticise the crew's commitment to doing a classic book and cultural phenomenon justice over what is a sprawling but consistent and worthwhile epic movie.
Thank you, Andy et al, I very much enjoyed your celluloid realisation of decades of wonder.