AFTER its success at the box office two years ago, the sequel to the movie It is now showing in cinemas. Both It and It: Chapter Two are an adaptation from Stephen King’s novel published in 1986.
The first film, which is the second adaptation from the novel after a 1990 miniseries, set numerous box office records and grossed over US$700 million (about RM3 billion) worldwide. It is the highest-grossing horror film of all-time.
The 2017 film tells the story of seven children in Derry, Maine (United States), who are terrorised by the eponymous being, only to face their own personal demons in the process. Through their adventures, the children, who named themselves The Losers Club, discover that they are all being stalked by the same entity, which they refer to as “It” a.k.a. Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
They determine that It assumes the appearance of what they fear most, awakening every 27 years to feed on the children of Derry before returning to hibernation. The Losers then swear a blood oath that they will return to Derry as adults if It returns.
This is where It: Chapter Two begins, 27 years later, when all the seven children have grown up and mostly left town.
When Pennywise returns, only one of the children who is still living in the town, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa), remembers what happened almost three decades ago; he decides he must inform his old friends to return to Derry. The other members of the Losers Club — Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy), Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain), Richie Tozier (Bill Hader), Ben Hanscom (Jay Ryan), Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone), and Stanley Uris (Andy Bean) — are amnesiac about their childhood and disturbed by the calls, but agree to return.
Stanley, however, commits suicide after his call. The remaining Losers reunite at a local restaurant and slowly begin to recover their memories, but are terrified by disturbing visions and taunts caused by It.
The group is then informed of Stanley’s suicide. Richie and Eddie decide to leave while Mike reveals to Bill that he met with a Native American tribe who showed him a vision of It arriving to Earth from the stars, and informed him of the Ritual of Chϋd, a way of destroying It once and for all.
Bill and Mike convince Richie and Eddie to stay and finish what was started.
Henry Bowers, the teen bully in the first movie who is now in a mental asylum (having survived his apparent death), escapes with the monster It’s help.
For the Chϋd ritual to work, each Loser must have an artefact from their past. Beverly goes to her old home and finds the love letter Ben wrote for her, though she believes Bill wrote it. Bill goes to the storm drain where Georgie was killed and recovers Georgie’s paper boat before meeting a boy named Dean, who tells Bill that he lives in Bill’s old house and often hears voices of children and a clown coming from the shower drain.
Ben goes to the town’s high school and finds his old yearbook page, which Beverly was the only person to sign. Eddie goes to a pharmacy and recovers an inhaler. Richie goes to an abandoned arcade where he finds a game token. After escaping individual encounters with It, the Losers use a shower cap from their childhood clubhouse for Stanley and Mike finds the rock that started their fight against the Bowers gang years prior.
Bill realises that It is going after Dean and rushes to a carnival to save him, but he can only helplessly watch Dean be devoured by It right in front of him. Traumatised by his failure to save both Georgie and Dean, he returns to the Neibolt house to murder It.
Bowers attacks and wounds Eddie and Mike, but is killed by Richie. The rest of the Losers depart for the Neibolt house to help Bill. The group descends into a massive cavern beneath the sewers and completes the Ritual, but It is able to withstand the Ritual, unaffected.
It takes on a giant, spider-like form with Pennywise’s head, and pressures Mike into revealing to the Losers that the Natives who attempted the Ritual in the past all perished.
The Losers are then thrown into nightmarish scenarios that they all eventually escape from before arriving back in the cavern. Richie is hypnotised by It’s hypnotic “deadlights” and is about to be killed but Eddie saves him, but is impaled by It in the process.
Will they be able to finally get rid of Pennywise in the end?
Although some critics say that this movie is a bad horror movie, I beg to differ. While I didn’t feel scared at all throughout the screening, the jumpscares would only affect those who are afraid of clowns.
While this is a rather lengthy movie (its duration is 165 minutes), I didn’t feel it at all. In fact, I didn’t even feel the need to run to the toilet throughout the screening.
And there were also a few emotional scenes thrown in the movie, which had some of the audience leaving the cinema hall with glistened eyes.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.
Oh, and since I watched it on the brand new ScreenX, the country’s first 270-degree cinema experience at Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) in 1 Utama Shopping Centre, it was indeed quite an amazing experience.