Will 'It: Chapter Two' Rule the Box Office?
by EG
A sequel to the 2017 hit horror adaptation It hits theaters this week, but will it match the surprising success of the original? Critics have been giving the film lukewarm reviews, but that might not matter to moviegoers. Read on for one critics opinion of the sequel.
Why isn't It a prestige miniseries for some cable or streaming company? Andy Muschietti's two-part film clearly yearns for that format, not only in its patience-testing length β nearly three hours just for Chapter Two, with the director teasing reporters about the prospect of a 6.5-hour supercut β but in an episodic structure that frustrates those who expect certain kinds of dynamics in drama and suspense. Literally doubling the number of actors who played key roles in its predecessor, 2017's Chapter One, the film puts excellent thesps in the parts but winds up feeling much less satisfying. Even so, it'll likely be seen by a sizable percentage of the moviegoers who made the first film a worldwide hit.
The eponymous villain from that pic, one may recall, is a shape-shifting nightmare who preys on the children of Derry, Maine, but for some reason only comes around every 27 years. (He's most often seen in the guise of a creepy clown called Pennywise, played by Bill Skarsgard.) Chapter One ended with a band of teens defeating It in 1989, promising that whatever became of them in the future, they'd team up again if the thing ever came back. Now it's 2016, and time to make good on that oath.
Trouble is, only one of these self-dubbed "Losers" remembers the pact. Earnest Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), the only one who has stayed in Derry, has spent the decades studying local lore about the monster; he sleeps in a library's attic next to a police scanner, waiting to hear about kids who've gone missing. After a spate of disappearances, he starts phoning up his old friends. Though a weird amnesia has struck them all, each one intuits the grave nature of the call β Richie (Bill Hader) feels it so deeply he immediately vomits.
Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman devote a full 30 minutes to nearly nothing but one character introduction after another, seeing how true each has stayed to his childhood self: Hypochondriac Eddie (James Ransone) remains obsessed with risk; Jessica Chastain's Beverly, having escaped her abusive father, finds herself reliving ugly patterns with a jealous husband; in the case of nervous Stanley, viewers may be distracted by what a great job casting director Rich Delia did matching Andy Bean to Wyatt Oleff, who played the character as a child.
Stanley's the only one who refuses to venture back to Derry, where a feel-good reunion over Chinese food β see how Ben (Jay Ryan), the chubby sweet kid, turned into a hunk! (and a billionaire!) β soon gives way to resurging memories of the terrors these friends have suppressed.
But they don't really need those memories, because this film now repeats the previous one nearly beat for beat, with each character inpidually facing the monster and witnessing its power.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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