WARNING!!**** SPOILERS AHEAD.
DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT 2.
Sitting in the theater after a long day’s work, lamenting the fact the AMC seats weren’t reclining, my friends and I sat through trailer after trailer, anxiously awaiting the conclusion of IT.
Let me start off by saying I have NOT read the books, so my entire opinion of the movie is solely based on what I watched that fateful Monday night.
In the opening scene of the movie we see a guy, Adrian, furiously trying to win a prize at the Derry Festival, shooting water into a clown’s mouth to burst a -gasp- red balloon. A little girl with a birthmark on her face stands next to him with the same gusto. This girl would later fall victim to Pennywise because she thought he would remove her birthmark -spoiler alert- he eats her instead.
Anyway, Adrian winds up winning the prize and sweetly giving it to the little girl, whispering, thanks for letting me win, which was truly an adorable moment. His boyfriend, Don, then enters who is from Derry and they embrace, talking about how they’ll be moving to NY and how much Don hates being from Derry. As they’re having this conversation a group of rough looking men and a disheveled teenager are staring them down, the teen apart of the group eventually goes up to the couple and and starts throwing homophobic slurs. The rest of the men join in support, calling them names and sneering that they don’t belong in this town. Adrian is not phased by their jeers and let’s them know Don is actually from Derry and even includes a jab at one of the guys, telling him to return the wig he borrowed to Meg Ryan. It was a terrible joke, but it really pissed the guy off. The raucous subsides and Don and Adrian decide to leave the festival. They make it outside and as they’re crossing a bridge, we see the homophobes from before are following them.
This is where things get incredibly ugly and violent. The evil men continue harassing the couple, throwing the F word around and finally snap after Adrian says something about one of the men wanting Adrian to take his clothes off. Hard punch after hard punch is seen as Adrian is beaten mercilessly. He is literally on the ground as his head bounces against the pavement with each punch. Don tries to stop the beating, but is held back by the other guys who are cheering the violence. The camera does not spare us from the brutality here and we see Adrian pull out his inhaler, blood-soaked, face crushed, struggling to breathe. The guy kicks the inhaler away, and Don screams, "He’s asthmatic!"
When we think the beating has ceased, through bloody, swollen lips, Adrian gurgles another insult and is dragged over and thrown over the side of the bridge into the rushing water below. They kicked down Don and leave him keeled over and crying, slumping to the water to see if he can find Adrian in the river. He looks across the bank and sees Pennywise holding Adrian’s limp body. For some reason I thought, okay, Pennywise is gonna maybe lick his face or something and then run after those evil men, but no. Pennywise proceeds to laugh and take a gigantic bite out of Adrian’s body, killing him. After this scene I had very low hopes for the rest of the movie. I literally felt like leaving. The rest of the movie crept in various homophobic rhetoric that was just very uncomfortable.
Another thing about the movie that was disappointing was the way Mike, the ONE person of color’s character was handled. Again, I have not read the book, so it’s completely possible his character was given the same amount of attention as his friends, but in the movie, he was basically just a plot device with little to no character development. Mike is the reason all of the friends convene back in Derry and he is the only one who remembers the events that happened in their childhood, except Stanley who kills himself in the beginning of the movie after Mike’s phone call. However, it’s strange that he does considering no one remembered what happened and in his suicide note at the end of the movie, it seems like he hasn’t forgotten. But the other friends don’t remember anything until they’ve all gathered back in Derry when their memories slowly return. There are a number of little confusing tidbits like this sprinkled throughout the movie. Fun!
So, Mike is the proprietor of what happened to the friend group. He is the only one of the friends who’s stayed behind and is seemingly a little cray considering he’s been living above a library for a number of years, and has been studying IT the entire time. After he gathers everyone together at a Chinese restaurant, Pennywise terrorizes them with a message in each of their fortune cookies that points to Stanley’s suicide and tiny monsters that break out of the rest of the fortune cookies that attack them. After this everyone is ready to (understandably) get the hell out of there, but poor Mike has to beg them and make them remind them of their childhood oath to defeat Pennywise if he returns.
Then there’s this weird ass tension between Beverly and Bill and the unrequited pining of Ben (who grows up to be a mega-babe) for Beverly. Beverly and Bill have a moment during one of the scenes, but it does nothing with the story line and is just confusing because it is seemingly forgotten by the both of them by the end of the movie.
During the movie they all remember their lives in Derry more vividly and Beverly even realizes she has seen all of them die in one of her childhood memories. Yes, she knows how each and every one of them dies, but for some reason nobody thought to ask how or be too disturbed that she knew this information.
A few other moments that confused tf outta me:
Why did Pennywise call Richie’s homosexuality a dirty little secret?
How the hell did they get to the conclusion that they had to make Pennywise "small" to defeat him using - get this - THEIR WORDS!
How come they didn’t just drag Eddie’s body out of the dungeon place?
Ugh, why did Eddie have to die?! He was my favorite.
Why didn’t Ben just tell Beverly he wrote that damn post card in the beginning?
Their whole love story could’ve been kept tbh.
Why tf were there so many baby hands in the movie?
All in all It Chapter 2 wasn’t by any means the worst movie I’ve seen, but it WAS incredibly long and felt kinda prejudice. I had such high hopes for the sequel because I genuinely enjoyed the first one, and this one really has so much potential! I really love the actors in this movie and think they did an awesome job, but I guess I was just expecting something well… different than the homophobic, awkward, baby-hands filled almost 3 hour predictable jump-scare fest it was.