The fourth caveat on the Derry-go-round, IT2 makes good on its promise to meliorate its formers; ballooning the scares, endearing meaningfulness and emphatically improving upon its televisual shadow of 1990. Truer to King’s beastly hardback, IT2 manages to render itself as a mainstream masterpiece of macabre merriness which is both an intrinsically artistic and instrumentally compelling venture. Intensity here is high on the richter scale; beware those frail of heart, it's definitely wise to spend those pennies.
IT2 reunites the children of its chapter as adults who have all taken figurative amnesiac pills to move on from their clown-shrouded pasts and the ill dairy of Derry — bar one. Absorbed as the nightwatchman of Derry, the loyal lodger (Mike) realises that the eater of worlds has returned after 27 years and is eating children again. The ‘losers’ reunite to scupper the face-painted felon once more. To kill IT. For good.
What dignifies IT2’s success is its formal and structural togetherness. Jump-scares are wed with the symptomatic confrontations of a past less scary than a terrifying present. The intertwining transparency in conflating adulthood and adolescence is seamless, achieved through an ingenious editing didactic not dissimilar to Flanagan’s Oculus (but cohering for clarity rather than ambiguity). The cast perform perfectly to their characters and offer a wide spectrum of rollercoaster emotions that reek of the unreal reality they inhabit. The film is architecturally sound and far less flimsy than the original that crumbled into pieces in the final act (ala mobbish spider-shite). And Skarsgard’s presence - of the strabismical succubus - is scarier than the hottest curry on its way out (Skarsgard skims a superb Curry).
Taking nothing away from the production - that really listened to fans by offering a banquet of baroque and a decent final act - there ARE some kinks in IT. Some story arcs are surplus to requirements, notably the ballad of Billy Bowers and the provenance of Pennywise, both of which yield no purposeful profit. There’s also the voguish CGI gripe; overused (as it was in the first chapter) to the extent that it snobbishly antiquates animatronics, which should have been used for scenes with less grandeur for greater effect (monsters just don’t seem like real monsters without latex!). Lastly, there exists a rather shameful plug for King’s upcoming fiction-to-flick doctor Sleep (heeeeeeeeere’s Jonny!), but hey, that’s commodification for you. It’s not perfect, but IT is less a remake than a restoration, improving upon the quality of IT’s content and not just its aesthetic.
ORANGES AND LEMONS, SAY THE BELLS OF ST CLEMENTS, HOW DOES IT SOUND, BE IN WITH A PENNY, AND OUT WITH A POUND.
|| That’s me when people tell me I should smile. https://t.co/yyyHDK8qtD— Pennywise (@FearFloats) September 13, 2019
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