Horror missing from campy It Chapter Two

Jessica Chastain, Isaiah Mustafa, and Jay Ryan in It Chapter Two. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

It Chapter Two is a bad piece of horror. It fails at some fundamental elements of horror to the degree the supposed frights are laughable, because the filmmakers never find an adequate ambiance for their film. And somehow this is one of the least offensive aspects to It Chapter Two, which wanders into some troubled waters through either ineptitude or cruelty.

It Chapter Two picks up 27 years after the first film, with the return of the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) to the small, (apparently) redneck town of Derry, Maine. Losers Club member Mike (Isaiah Mustafa) recruits Bill (James McAvoy), Beverly (Jessica Chastain), Ben (Jay Ryan), Richie (an excellent Bill Hader), and Eddie (James Ransone) for one final battle against an ancient evil. Together, the Losers need to overcome bad memories, their worst fears, and the return of the crazed Henry Bowers (Teach Grant) to save the denizens of a small Maine town from a voracious clown.

The underlying issue with It Chapter Two is a lack of tonal consistency. The film veers all over the place throughout its nearly three hours, jumping from comedy to horror to oddity to melodrama and back and forth and forth and back. All of these tones form a campy goulash, a very silly little thing with barely a whiff of horror. The reliance of poor CGI adds to this overarching silliness, as it's difficult to take a monster seriously when it clearly doesn't exist in the same plane as the characters screaming at it. Ultimately it's unclear what director Andy Muschietti and writer Gary Dauberman want It Chapter Two to be. If they wanted horror they needed to set a stronger atmosphere and tone, or pump more out of the individual horrors the characters have to work through to survive. If they wanted to do parody a la Cabin in the Woods they need to have more to say about the genre they mock. What's left is bizarre, but in a way that indicates the creators are trying far too hard to be strange.

Viewers get a lot of this because It Chapter Two is long. It is very, very long, nearly three hours of plot to get through for an unsatisfying conclusion. Even with the extra time the film remains a mess with its character development, with the arcs for Ben, Beverly, Richie, and Mike incomplete or unsatisfying. It Chapter Two focuses mostly on Bill as he overcomes his guilt over his brother's death in film one. It's a nice story, but the film pads a couple of side adventures for Bill that hammer in a point already told effectively. By going all in on Bill the other stories lack comprehensive resolutions. It Chapter Two has some rather strange narrative choices it navigates through. A couple of kids are sacrificed to Pennywise because the main characters need to feel even more guilt for abandoning their responsibilities. Henry Bowers returns and engages in some stabbing shenanigans that ultimately don't add anything of note to the story. Other decisions are far more troublesome, like the use of magical Native Americans as a solution for killing Pennywise. This is both incredibly lazy storytelling and a regressive view of Native American culture.

Most of these can be chalked up to mediocre to bad filmmaking. What's really bothersome about It Chapter Two is Richie's arc. Richie is gay. The film insinuates this point throughout the course of its run time, alluding to deep secrets and a lost, unrequited love. Yet It Chapter Two never uses the word gay or queer or any non-pejorative to describe Richie. Richie never says the word aloud either, despite his narrative centering on self acceptance. This is very much bullshit. It takes a lot of courage to come out, courage which Richie shows through multiple battles with Pennywise. Coming out would be a near perfect conclusion to his story, but instead the filmmakers quietly allude to it again because they can't have a main character say “I am gay.” The only openly gay characters are beaten to near death before Pennywise shows up to take a chunk out of one of them. It Chapter Two literally opens with a hate crime, sprinkles in additional slurs throughout, but lacks the cajones to allow its one gay protagonist to come out. This is both lazy writing and cowardly, which fits a film without a clear vision of what it wants to be.

Review: One and a Half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 209 minutes

Genre: Horror

tl;dr

What Worked: Cast (especially Billy Hader), Humor

What Fell Short: Horror, Plot, Length, Tropes

What To Watch As Well: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Midsommar

Brittany Runs a Marathon is a charming, funny trip through self improvement

Jillian Bell in Brittany Runs a Marathon. Image courtesy Amazon Studios.

The biggest depicted success in the delightful Brittany Runs a Marathon is one of the earliest, when the main character barely runs to the end of a New York City block. Eventually the character does complete the feat mentioned in the title, but the film's focus is not just on the grand moments but on accomplishing those little milestones along the way. Every step forward is a step toward something greater, even if the film sometimes can't stay on that path completely.

Jillian Bell stars as the eponymous Brittany, a hard-partying late 20-something with little direction and even less ambition. Pushed by a doctor to get into better shape, Brittany starts running alongside the energetic Catherine (Michaela Watkins) and the friendly Seth (Micah Stock). Brittany's dream becomes to run the New York City Marathon for the challenge and to spite her shallow roommate Gretchen (Alice Lee). Things start to turn around for Brittany as her health improves and she catches the eye of artistic slacker Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar), but the good times can only last so long. As the training gets more difficult and life events turn against her, Brittany has to defeat her self doubts and begin to accept herself as a person worthy of friendship from Catherine, Seth, Jern, and her supportive brother-in-law Demetrius (Lil Rel Howery).

The charm of Brittany Runs a Marathon starts with Bell, a terrific comedienne who brings out both the best and the worst of her character. Brittany isn't that far from being a tepid character – movies about emotionally delayed white folks are a dime a dozen – but Bell keeps Brittany tolerable even as she drifts into caustic self loathing and lashes out at others. The inevitable coming through the wilderness moment in the third act is validated because Bell makes for a brilliant, lovable underdog one step at a time. This is the theme of Brittany Runs a Marathon, that people can achieve far more than they think they can through incremental success. Brittany is designed to be a normal person, someone who went from doing nothing to finding purpose and self satisfaction with who she is. Running makes for the perfect woman versus self story because it requires Brittany to defeat her self hatred to achieve a greater purpose of being. Bell makes Brittany worth rooting for, but the journey is relatable for the weekend warriors who grind through streets with no intention of actually winning the race. For Brittany Runs a Marathon, just getting through that first block is a massive success.

 

The cracks of Brittany Runs a Marathon begin to show as the films moves away from Brittany. While Watkins and Stock are good in their roles, neither is a particularly fleshed out character, designed to be there more for Brittany's sake then themselves. The film throws in a subplot in the third act for Catherine, but the timing is too late to establish it as a crucial part of Catherine's characterization. Gretchen exists solely to be hated, never allowed to overcome her initial awfulness and be more than a barrier for Brittany to overcome. Seth is the stock gay friend who exists as a support structure. The worst though is Jern, who is described as a man-child in the film and doesn't evolve beyond that. For a woman who seeks growth and self improvement, it's strange for Brittany to come back to someone who never shows any burning desire to better himself. Jern is a problem because he is uninterested in growing up in a movie that emphasizes personal growth over almost everything else.

At the least though Jern is often funny, as are the rest of the characters. First time writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo has a good ear for banter and a solid sense of comedic interaction. Colaizzo throws in some pretty good one liners for Bell and company to chew on, and even uses some clever bits of visual humor to punctuate the jokes. Colaizzo and the film don't go for broke, but they get the little things – Brittany's growth, her relationships with Demetrius, Catherine, and Seth, the final race – right more often than not and create an endearing movie worth rooting for.

*This movie was produced by Amazon Studios. I work in a different department at Amazon.

Review: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 103 minutes

Genre: Comedy

tl;dr

What Worked: Jillian Bell, Story, Humor

What Fell Short: Secondary Characters

What To Watch As Well: Rudy