I Like to Watch | IT Chapter 2
I love the writing of Stephen King. I am, as one would say, a superfan.
I recall long road trips with my mom and sister when I would sit in the back seat of the car, plugged into my Sony Walkman listening to Maynard Ferguson, pouring through ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and, of course, The Stand. A strange intersection because of that experience is that now, whenever I listen to Maynard Ferguson, it evokes a sense of low-grade dread and a soundtrack more suited to horror than big band jazz.
Along with my deep dives into the world of Castle Rock and Derry, I grew up dealing with poverty, bullying because I was both perpetually the new kid at school, domestic abuse by my first stepfather, an aversion to Church, a built-in disdain for the wealthy, and a need to provoke as much as inform. My childhood was not ideal in a textbook sort of way but taking the time to put those experiences in perspective, contextualizing them, and hoping they don’t lead me around like a dirty Pied Piper is a daily journey.
In 1990, ABC aired a two-part, three-hour movie event featuring the inimitable Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown that I thought was a pretty excellent adaptation of the much loved novel. Curry was creepy and charismatic and, I’d argue, it was his voice — that rich, amazing baritone and the way he curled his mouth around his words — that stuck with me in best nightmarish sense.
Jumping to 2017, when New Line Cinema came out with Andy Muschietti’s version, I was thrilled to check it out and IT did not disappoint. Using CGI to great effect and replacing the Shakespearean clown of Curry with the snake-like, leering Pennywise of Bill Skarsgård, the 2017 remake was truly terrifying, fun in that jump scare sort of way, and primed me for the return of The Losers Club as adults in the 2019 follow-up.
In 1986, when the novel came out, I was just out of high school, the book was very much about the clown and terrors of being a kid in an increasingly dangerous world. It wasn’t that the world was somehow more dangerous for me in the ’80s than it was for my mother or my grandfather in their coming-of-age times but it seemed that way to me. Pennywise was some fucking scary shit up until King revealed in the book’s conclusion that he was just a giant psychic spider.
Four years later, as a recently graduated college student figuring out how to live in Chicago, the ABC version was less scary but still exciting. I felt I was all grown up, that I had a handle on things, that my understanding of the world was fully formed. I thought I could relate to the adult versions of The Losers Club. The story was still, however, about the clown.
This week, I headed over to Palace Station (a casino about five minutes walk from my apartment), got a huge beer, some popcorn, and settled in to watch the follow-up to the remake. I had read some squawk about how it wasn’t scary enough and that it was too long (the former is irrelevant and the latter is absolutely true).
Quick thoughts: Bill Hader is excellent and owns every frame he is in. The rest of the cast is uniformly good. The production is both funny and well done. Skarsgård is creepy and malevolent as the clown.
It occurred to me about a third of the way into the film that this second half of the story isn’t about the clown, it’s about the people fighting the clown. As an older man, it hit me that this second act of The Losers Club was about adults suddenly being forced to deal with how their past shapes their present in both conscious and unconscious ways.
It’s about Bev (the always awesome Jessica Chastain) dealing with the effects of her abusive father on her choices to be with men who abuse her. It’s about Ben (a serviceable Jay Ryan) going from traumatized fat kid to buff architect. Bill becoming a writer who can’t seem to conjure up a decent ending to his stories. Mike (the under-utilized Isaiah Mustafa) being the one member of the gang who stayed reliving the trauma of evil while his white friends conveniently are allowed to forget.
IT Chapter 2 is about how the trials of growing up tailor the life of the grown. Sure, these specific kids grew up having defeated a serial killing apparition of pure evil, so that certainly comes into play. It is not about the clown except in that the clown was a traumatic experience writ larger than life. As children, they learned that facing their fear head on and refusing it purchase was the way to defeat it yet the lesson never quite took hold once they grew up and away.
In that way, this film is even scarier but on a wholly existential perspective. It holds true that our childhood forms who we are as adults and that our choices today are perched upon the choices and consequences of choices made for us, around us, and by us in those formative years. Confronting those horrifying experiences and choosing different paths is the road to adulthood and so many of the adults in this very America society have yet to confront their killer clown.
Finally, with CGI, making the clown a spider with the head of Bill Skarsgård fixed the ending.
