It Chapter Two: horror and the gays finally get the lavish treatment they deserve. Clowns, not so much

11 Sep 2019.
by Drew Rowsome -

It was a Stephen King weekend. All day Saturday AMC ran a marathon of classic Stephen King flicks that I could not resist dipping in and out of: Creepshow (Adrienne Barbeau! cockroaches!), Pet Sematary 2 (better than I remembered and lots of Murder She Wrote alumni), Silver Bullet (Gary Busey is scarier than a werewolf), Pet Sematary 1 (Fred Gwynne! and why is Mary Lambert not a revered and constantly working director?), and the homoerotic masterpiece Christine. Monday was delivery of my copy of The Institute (so far it is vintage King and I'm regretting taking time away from reading to type). But Sunday was the main event: It Chapter Two on the big screen.

It Chapter Two is, despite some incredible set pieces, not a great horror film. It is however a spectacular film, richly comic, and an unexpectedly touching gay love story. There are jump scares that work beautifully and the suspenseful dread builds right up until the final battle with Pennywise, when the CGI and some misplaced mysticism take over. Bill Skarsgard is so good, so gleefully perverse, that his death scene (I'm sure that's not a spoiler) had my sympathies completely with Pennywise. Somehow having the grown-up losers club turn into bullies chanting "You're just a little clown," broke my heart and made me mourn that there isn't another season of Baskets. 

Of course I wasn't coming to the material cold. Stephen King's novel is a masterpiece even if it too has a problematic ending, a problem endemic to the horror genre. And there is no way that all that the novel entails could be explored in a film, not even the iconic television version or, now, Andy Muschietti's stylish and slavishly faithful two part films. (It Chapter Two, the second half of the story, is, at three hours that feel like way less, almost as long as the television mini-series. There is apparently a director's cut coming but I'm hoping for a lovingly long, eight to ten episodes, Netflix version.) What is intriguing is what the film chooses to emphasis, and what it gives short shrift.

It Chapter One was a lean, mean horror film and, because the protagonists were children, there was a lot at stake. Once the Losers Club has grown up, their problems and their fates are less compelling. They are also more complicated and some subplots are set up but then pruned. But that is speculating about what is not on the screen, and what is there is very intriguing. It Chapter Two begins, as the novel did, with a horrific gaybashing, even worse as in the film as it is Canada's beloved queer enfant terrible Xavier Dolan who becomes Pennywise's first victim. The novel sets up that Pennywise feeds on the town of Derry's outcasts, the town's hatred for those who are different makes gays, blacks, nerds, the overweight and women - the composition of the Losers Club - vulnerable. 

The film follows through, all the victims of Pennywise that we see devoured are outcasts, specifically the little girl with a prominent birthmark. This is also the moment I first felt sympathy for Pennywise, outcast because he favours the form of a clown. What we don't see is how that ties in with the other losers, and so their journey becomes merely a struggle not to become fodder during Pennywise's revengeful rampage. Mike Hanlon's racially charged history is reduced to witnessing a fire in a crack den, whereas the novel had a full and complex back story that drove the point home. Even the haunted glory of Isaiah Mustafa can't rescue Mike from becoming a bit player.

Beverly Marsh is trapped in a cycle of abuse with menstruation blood and sexuality as its symbols. Jessica Chastain is wonderful, her scene with Pennywise as the old woman is delicious old school horror, but she is not given enough to do and the abusive husband disappears as soon as he appears. She is already a woman with strength. Jay Ryan as Ben, the fat boy grown to be a hunk, is also reduced to a plot device. The moment where Beverly figures out who wrote the love poem is a throwaway instead of, despite the surging strings, a powerful moment. James McAvoy as Bill, the pivotal character because he is the writer and Stephen King stand-in, has guilt issues left over from the first film which are also thrown away in the one scene that is too long. However he does also get a great action sequence that riffs off The Lady from Shanghai. 

It is Richie Tozier who gets the central story. Richie has been harbouring a crush on Eddie Kaspbrak and while the film gives him the out of it possibly being a bromance and not a lusty romance, it provides a tidy cyclical structure to the film. (In the television series Eddie is explicitly a gay man, the film is more ambiguous relying on hen-pecked and hypochondria as signifiers.) Bill Hader is an extraordinary Richie and, because of the killer combination of comedian and queen, walks away with the film. He is tormented by a giant Paul Bunyan and a football team, all gay porn staples, and a Pomeranian, the third gayest of all dog breeds, does a Large Marge.

It is disturbing, but probably realistic, that Eddie has to die in order for Richie to confront his true self. Hader and James Ransone make an almost vaudevillian pair, riffing off each other with affectionate exasperation. The younger Richie is portrayed by Finn Wolfhard who was memorable in the first film but here adds a whole new level of subtle torment behind the coke bottle glasses. The glasses are almost as thick as the armour that Hader layers onto his performance, quipping bitterly to prevent from revealing all. While revealing all. It is that good of a performance. (And it is good to know that Meg Ryan has become a camp goddess. I must not have got that memo.)

What makes It Chapter Two so incredible is that it is a luxurious old-fashioned movie made with care and a big budget. The score is sumptuous, the camerawork smooth, and all the transitions but one are smooth and pointed without drawing too much attention to themselves. Pennywise's special effects are, with the exception of the spider and the scifi excursions, seamless and startlingly realistic (especially in comparison to the '80s effects I had just watched on AMC). The horror genre and the gay ghetto of filmmaking have finally received the lavish Hollywood treatment they always deserved. Like the losers club, they have arrived and have staked the heart of the mainstream.