Control Review: It Chapter Two

I, Dalton Lewis, watched both It movies. I read the novel while growing up but haven’t looked at it for over twenty years. I remember thoroughly enjoying the novel back then. The novel features a group of seven or so friends who form The Losers Club, a group of outcasts and misfits that care for and love each other. They face off against an evil clown with diabolical powers who wants to destroy them.

In the first film the friends were twelve or so years old and growing up. They tried to deal with bullying and trying to figure out who they are. Ben, the overweight kid, goes to the library and learns about architecture and builds the group a clubhouse. Beverly wants to get away from an abusive father and begins a cycle of violence that haunts her as an adult. Richie learns to deflect everything through humor. Eddie evaluates risk and tries to stay alive. Bill wants to overcome stuttering. Stan wants to overcome crippling fear. Mike wants to escape a harrowing incident from his childhood.

As adults they become varying degrees of successful, with Bill becoming a hit horror novelist. Eddie analyzes data to stay alive, Ben loses the weight and becomes an architect, Beverly marries an abusive man, Mike becomes a libarian in his hometown, Stan becomes a successful but scared man, Richie becomes a comedian, and all of them don’t really remember fully how to deal with a murderous clown who menaced them twenty seven years earlier. They show up in Derry because murders start to happen again.

Many critics didn’t like this one quite as much as the first movie about the characters — the one about them as kids. I disagreed. I think that kids inevitably become adults or die, and I wanted to see who these children became as adults. It’s an intelligent transition with a number of different results that fit real life a little bit: some people become successes and others seem mired in the middle, and no one becomes as famous and rich as they really want.

Pennywise and his goons threaten the characters in a number of scary sequences which are intelligent in that the scares reflect some flaw the characters have. I really liked the way that the people aren’t action heroes with big muscles and big guns — normal people have to face extraordinary problems instead of The Rock and Jason Statham facing off against a huge, muscle-ripped supervillain. Normal people can do amazing feats of heroism, and Stephen King understands that.

Stephen King’s novels often translate into effective films. Clearly The Shawshank Redemption is considered one of the greatest movies of all time, and it deserves that. This movie might not be as literary as that, but it’s an effective thriller with excellent characters. I think that to spend three hours with these people would be a very nice use of that time.

Thanks, and take care, friends.