Stephen King goes to the movies... (1 Viewer)

[Johnny Angell]

Johnny, (and anybody that wants this) the blu is now back in stock at Amazon and now only $12.96.

And I have ordered. Thank you. Love the cover art.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

And I have ordered. Thank you. Love the cover art.

Ha, the cover art is excellent but I will also say that this film is a rather harrowing watch under the current circumstances, particularly the first couple hours of it...just saying...

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Well, I did get around to watching the second half of the recent two picture It project. What an odd attempt at a film this was. I should start by stating a couple of things, first I've never read the novel and second I do not find clowns frightening. That said I did feel the first film in this project was OK. Not good, not terrible, but a decent attempt to tell a King story on film and I thought the young cast did a very good job. My feeling is if you want a recent really good high quality King epic on film go for Doctor Sleep. It is in every way just a much better movie experience than these It pictures.

This second film in the It two-parter goes off the rails fairly quick and never gets back on track. For whatever reason they decided to lean more into comedy with the adult cast. They also decided to make this film part sequel and part tribute film to a lot of mostly 1980s era horror. This whole thing really plays like an extremely long, very unfocused, and really not very good episode of Tales From the Crypt. This seems the touchstone influence on it.

Honestly, the adult cast in the film, while being a nice collection of actors, are stuck in roles that just leave them with nowhere to go and they are completely forgettable. Bill Hader really steals the show and is the one character with a pulse. The rest of them sort of sleepwalk through the film. Jessica Chastain seems totally uninterested in being there. James McAvoy, who is pretty reliable in bringing something to the table in a horror film, is about as dull and generic as he could possibly be. The rest of the adult cast could have been played by cardboard stand-ups.

Not sure who's idea it was to take bits from other films and throw them into this but it was not a good one. Completely ripping the scene where the head grows legs and scurries around from Carpenter's The Thing, and even including a character saying the line "You've got to be fucking kidding me." was just awful. All doing things like this served to accomplish was to remind you, you could be spending your time watching much better movies...and this film is ridiculously long so you do waste a lot of time watching it.

This is a film that will leave you gazing at your watch a lot. It defines the word slog. It does have everything they could have asked for to make a Stephen King film. A good sized budget, a quality cast, King's material to work from...and like so many other attempts at translating King to the big screen, It fall's flat on it's face.

Chapter one in this saga is worth a watch and fairs much better. The kids have a chemistry the adult cast seems almost to be trying to completely avoid. Also the first chapter feels more like they are telling a King story whereas Chapter Two seems like they are making a movie that is designed to be a parody of other films.

The picture is never exciting, it is never frightening, it is never interesting.

My final recommendation...

Avoid It!

 

[TravisR]

Completely ripping the scene where the head grows legs and scurries around from Carpenter's The Thing, and even including a character saying the line "You've got to be fucking kidding me." was just awful.

I just considered it a homage or an in-joke for horror movie fans more than a rip-off. According to huge movie fan Bill Hader, he added the line.

As Hader says, “come on, The Thing had a head turn into a spider and scuttle off, and we’re doing the same thing. We should at least acknowledge it.”

Bill Hader Tells Us How He Snuck An Homage To A Horror Classic Into ’I

This improvised line has the benefit of recalling a classic and being 100% perfect for one of the craziest moments in ’It: Chapter Two.’

uproxx.com

Speaking of Bill Hader, I recommend watching Barry. It's a very dark show on HBO about a hitman suffering from PTSD and Hader & the entire cast is just perfect.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I just considered it a homage or an in-joke for horror movie fans more than a rip-off. According to huge movie fan Bill Hader, he added the line.

Bill Hader Tells Us How He Snuck An Homage To A Horror Classic Into ’I

This improvised line has the benefit of recalling a classic and being 100% perfect for one of the craziest moments in ’It: Chapter Two.’

uproxx.com

Speaking of Bill Hader, I recommend watching Barry. It's a very dark show on HBO about a hitman suffering from PTSD and Hader & the entire cast is just perfect.

Not surprised, I mean Hader seems the one conscious being in the film so of course he would think of saying the line from The Thing when they were recreating a scene from Carpenter's film. That scene, and probably also because it is Hader, plays like an SNL parody of the scene from Carpenter's film.

 

[Malcolm R]

Yeah, I've had this on blu for several months now, but the extreme running time keeps discouraging me from watching. I wasn't really a huge fan of the first, either.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Yeah, I've had this on blu for several months now, but the extreme running time keeps discouraging me from watching. I wasn't really a huge fan of the first, either.

I struggled mightily to get through it. The best sequence for the adult cast comes fairly early in the picture. The adult "Losers Club" comes together in a Chinese restaurant in Maine. I did enjoy this and it seemed the best moment in the film for the ensemble. It also managed to clearly establish them as a group and that they were going to face a massive challenge. Sadly, things bog down from there.

After that scene basically lays out all the weirdness they are going to have to confront the movie then goes into a series of repetitive scenes where each character, essentially locating a talisman they need for a later ceremony, has to face some form of horror on their own to collect the item they need.

This does nothing for the film but create a whole bunch of repetitive scenes which at a certain point even the filmmakers seem to feel are just like watching a ship sink in slow motion. While having each character go through a solo horror experience likely worked in novel form, for the film it just becomes like watching Groundhog Day.

It's a damn endurance test getting through this and you obviously know each character, as in a video game, will come away with the object they need...because that's how you get to the next "level."

The problem is you don't really care about these characters nor any of these shenanigans because it is clear they have no stakes and the adult actors are either playing these scenes as goofy comedy or just going through the motions. However, you have sit through each sequence one after another to get to the next step in their challenge.

It has been a while since I felt the crushing weight of a film's running time oozing by. This runs over 2 1/2 hours but it feels like 10 which is probably the scariest thing about this picture.

 

[TravisR]

I wasn't really a huge fan of the first, either.

That's why I didn't really care enough to get too worried about or invested in the second one. I doubt I'll ever see it a second time but I didn't find it bad and I'm a big enough fan of Jessica Chastain and Bill Hader that I don't regret watching it or anything.

 

[Johnny Angell]

Concerning the spider, it is my vague recollection that the mini-series represented IT as a spider-like creature at the end. Perhaps that was in the novel also.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Concerning the spider, it is my vague recollection that the mini-series represented IT as a spider-like creature at the end. Perhaps that was in the novel also.

Well, I think you are correct that in the TV mini-series It does at one point turn into a "spider" but...

Spoiler: SPOILER

...the nature of It is it is more some sort of evil force that basically becomes whatever you fear.

That said what they do in this film is essentially directly pay tribute to/rip off bits from other films. So, the head growing legs and running around is directly and intentionally taken from Carpenter's The Thing. Right down to Hader's idea to speak the line from The Thing.

 

[Citizen87645]

It's been about 30 years since I read the novel, but my understanding of the whole spider thing was

Spoiler

that it looked that way because that's the closest thing humans could relate it to. Even then, it was not exactly right, which made the whole thing even creepier, for its true form to be so unfathomable that human minds can't entirely grasp it. And so the name "IT" makes sense, because there is no name or label for it.

It taking the shape of one's fears was its modus operandi, but the spider-like form was supposed to be as close to its true form as we could perceive.

The TV show never explained that (and to be fair, I don't know how it or the movie could without having it be clunky), so especially for someone who didn't read the novel, I can see how that winds up seeming even more lame and anti-climactic. "It's just a giant spider?!"

The spider form is definitely what I consider one of the unfilmable aspects of the novel.

Well, I think you are correct that in the TV mini-series It does at one point turn into a "spider" but...

Spoiler: SPOILER

...the nature of It is it is more some sort of evil force that basically becomes whatever you fear.

That said what they do in this film is essentially directly pay tribute to/rip off bits from other films. So, the head growing legs and running around is directly and intentionally taken from Carpenter's The Thing. Right down to Hader's idea to speak the line from The Thing.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

It's been about 30 years since I read the novel, but my understanding of the whole spider thing was

Spoiler

that it looked that way because that's the closest thing humans could relate it to. Even then, it was not exactly right, which made the whole thing even creepier, for its true form to be so unfathomable that human minds can't entirely grasp it. And so the name "IT" makes sense, because there is no name or label for it.

It taking the shape of one's fears was it's modus operandi, but the spider-like form was supposed to be as close to its true form as we could perceive.

The TV show never explained that (and to be fair, I don't know how it or the movie could without having it be clunky), so especially for someone who didn't read the novel, I can see how that winds up seeming even more lame and anti-climactic. "It's just a giant spider?!"

The spider form is definitely what I consider one of the unfilmable aspects of the novel.

OK, so I will spoiler this in case people do not want to read info about the ending of this recent film version:

Spoiler: SPOILER

So, It does turn into a giant spider-like creature at the end in this as well, although a more "alien" version of a spider. The head that grows legs comes earlier in the film and appears to indicate either that It has gone to the movies and has seen Carpenter's The Thing or one of the Losers Club had seen it and found it very frightening so It pulls that out of someone's mind and recreates it for them. To me it did not play well and seemed a really bad idea. Obviously, what I think King was doing with his story was winking at Lovecraft again, and It is just one of the old gods. In this film It appears to be just a group of glowing orbs that have descended on the planet from somewhere in outer space. So, It is alien. None of the forms It takes are real or what it really is as it appears to be just this energy in the form of glowing balls of light.

 

[Tino]

So, the head growing legs and running around is directly and intentionally taken from Carpenter's The Thing.

I viewed it more as an homage.

 

[Citizen87645]

Spoiler

The novel also makes it very clear it is an alien, that it landed on the Earth in prehistoric times and was basically underground for that whole time, feeding every 23(?) years throughout time.

OK, so I will spoiler this in case people do not want to read info about the ending of this recent film version:

Spoiler: SPOILER

So, It does turn into a giant spider-like creature at the end in this as well, although a more "alien" version of a spider. The head that grows legs comes earlier in the film and appears to indicate either that It has gone to the movies and has seen Carpenter's The Thing or one of the Losers Club had seen it and found it very frightening so It pulls that out of someone's mind and recreates it for them. To me it did not play well and seemed a really bad idea. Obviously, what I think King was doing with his story was winking at Lovecraft again, and It is just one of the old gods. In this film it appears to be just a group of glowing orbs that appear to have descended on the planet from somewhere in outer space. So, It is alien. None of the forms It takes are real or what it really is as it appears just to be this energy in the form of glowing balls of light.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

My next King watch will be Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Not a film but a TV series based on his short stories I missed when it was on. It's now a bargain collection so you can pick it up for anywhere from $5 to $8 dollars. It seems a love it or hate it series. There is a really good cast, William Hurt and William H, Macy among others. Any non spoiler thoughts on it?

 

[Malcolm R]

Finally got around to IT: Chapter 2. My issues with the ending weren't really with the appearance of IT, but when it's claiming

Spoiler

"I'm an eater of worlds!" it seems laughable when it's apparently been on Earth for millennia (or at least several centuries), but it has done nothing except feed on a few children in the same small town on a 27-year cycle. I don't know how it claims to be an "eater of worlds" when it has not even spread beyond the Derry area in all that time. I may have actually burst out laughing at that ridiculous statement that IT intended to be a brag or to instill some fear.

 

[Detour (1945)]

My next King watch will be Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Any non spoiler thoughts on it?

I have that DVD set and remember liking it, but don't remember much about it right now. Can't believe it's been 14 years already!

Sounds like a good reason for a rewatch, thanks for bringing it up!

 

[Citizen87645]

Perhaps IT is a

Spoiler

slow digester.

Finally got around to IT: Chapter 2. My issues with the ending weren't really with the appearance of IT, but when it's claiming

Spoiler

"I'm an eater of worlds!" it seems laughable when it's apparently been on Earth for millennia (or at least several centuries), but it has done nothing except feed on a few children in the same small town on a 27-year cycle. I don't know how it claims to be an "eater of worlds" when it has not even spread beyond the Derry area in all that time. I may have actually burst out laughing at that ridiculous statement that IT intended to be a brag or to instill some fear.

 

[TonyD]

Been about 30+ years since I read It! but I don’t remember it being An Alien
I got the idea that it was more like an evil embodiment of what people fear and uses that fear to devour them.
In the book there was also an embodiment of “good” that took the form of a huge Floatimg Turtle that may also have been a rainbow like creature. The turtle played a large role in the book as a sort of guide or protector for the children.

 

[Walter Kittel]

My next King watch will be Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Not a film but a TV series based on his short stories I missed when it was on. It's now a bargain collection so you can pick it up for anywhere from $5 to $8 dollars. It seems a love it or hate it series. There is a really good cast, William Hurt and William H, Macy among others. Any non spoiler thoughts on it?

View attachment 73168

My extremely vague recollection is that it was a mixed bag. Some stories worked, some not so much. I haven't thought about this in a long, long time; perhaps not the most glowing recommendation. I sort of remember the William Hurt episode and it was probably my favorite of the bunch.

- Walter.