“It Chapter 2″ starts with a horribly, violently, graphic gay hate crime that perhaps was meant to make even the most apathetic homophobes flinch. Instead it leads to a near revolting demise of an innocent gay man at the hands of Pennywise beneath the Derry Bridge and promptly put me off from the film.
Horror from an inter-dimensional clown is what I had signed up for tonight.
Not horror from the all-to-real rural and violent white male patriarchy.
It didn’t help the film is chased with a scene of adult Bill [McAvoy] requesting his wife Audra [Jess Wexler] “be the woman I want you to be,” a line that goes down hard for both myself and Audra.
And thankfully, in under two minutes of these back-to-back lame scenes, we get a masterful introduction to Bill Hader’s character, adult Richie.
Andy Bean’s Stan is a perfect adult accompaniment for Wylatt Oleff’s portrayal of childhood Stanley. In mere moments the tragedy of his trauma is made real.
Pennywise’s monstrous abilities to traumatize are what actually cause horror. An individual experiencing long-term terror is what the monster feeds off of. And that’s why Beverly is in a cycle of violence in a marriage where she is abused, why Stanley is too afraid to face his promise, why Henry Bowers is still living a near-catatonic life in a mental institution until the day the little red balloon shows up to verify his innocence.
Many realize long after reading King’s works that Pennywise’s greatest trick is also the masterful author’s. His talent is breathing life into your nightmares, dragging them from your dark shadows of your dreadful dreams and into the daylight where they shouldn’t be able to harm you; but they do.
Anxiety. Trauma.
These are the things that bond readers to King’s work and especially viewers to “It.” The story is fascinatingly apt at picking out what causes fear, what triggers horrible acts of violence or crippling sense of dread, and exploiting these things to get under the skin of those who feel they are impenetrable to the machinations of the genre known as Horror.
There’s the tools that the film utilizes; a fine musical score that creates suspense, a talented if-not overtly good-looking cast, and a source content that has proved it’s quality over time. Decent camerawork and phenomenal make-up on Pennywise [Skarsgård] should all be noted as well.
But what doesn’t land is the 3 hour time on the second half of an already notoriously long (if not overdrawn) story. The film can’t help but drag in that regard, how does it not? In a good book, you can be pulled in. Sure a page or two might lose you, but you muscle through.
Watching Beverly try to sort out her emotions to the now-grown-boys from her childhood is paperthin stuffing to a story that is already plenty stuffed.
When The Losers get back together to eat and swear over Asian Cuisine, a montage of recalled memories and stuffing pork rolls into their mouths, there’s a closeness one could recall from the previous film. A fondness of a bunch of ragtag kids who have only themselves and no one else to guard them, to help them, or to blame.
But as the film rumbles on past that thirty minute mark (that’s only the first 30 minutes!) you see the quality in their characters are cracked. They are still alone, maybe more than before. They have no one to help them, or guard them. Not until they can re-learn to work together.
King does what many great authors has done before him he builds a team of characters the way a role playing gamer might build a Dungeons & Dragons team. You need the brute, the brains, the questionable rogue or trickster, the wiseguy, the Wise Guy or reverent holder of secrets and knowledge, the Doubting Thomas, and of course, the Sex. Crichton’s perfected this team-building as well (think “Jurassic Park” or “Congo”) but King can do it with the average person. Crichton has experts in fields of science working together to overcome adversity. King puts a father in a local grocery market with his country bumpkin neighborhood to fight off creatures from another dimension during a town-wide quarantine.
King can make any team feel like The Team. He pulled it off with “It” back when it was published and my word, do the cast give it their best to capture those individuals and their quirks. The actors take a more than decent swing at these archetypes and almost all knock it out of the park.
The movie unfurls a horrible churn in the stomach as they disperse from the Jade of the Orient’s parking lot.
While just the first 45 minutes of the film spirals into the madness that fear creates, it also sets up a three-hour binge of terror that only Stephen King could have concocted.
I didn’t want to write a #YoungAdult story but here I am.
Writing something that is viciously #YoungAdult. I am hoping I can reel it back & re-direct it but I don’t want to squander a good story by just adding pointless swears and/or nudity. It’s erroneous, it doesn’t benefit the plot, it’s not more “adult” because it has more (or any) sex.
I just want it to feel more than that.
Hard to do with fantasy. It’s why I mostly avoid it. BUT THIS STORY! It’s
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28% of NY’s spare hospital beds are already occupied by confirmed COVID-19 patients
I’m sure that number is already higher added by the fact many can’t be or aren’t tested.
So reading an article yesterday I’m fucking furious. Lawmakers paid for, in advance, the research & development of portable ventilators for just this type of pandemic. Millions were paid, in advance. The company took 3 years to make 3 prototypes. Typically ventilators cost around 10K. The idea was to make cheaper portable ones for about 3K, that would be easier to train/maintain/distribute for emergencies. Great idea, right?
Well thanks to our shitty
profit motivated
healthcare system, that company stalled production until they could get bought by a rival company. That rival company was also selling ventilators and simply wanted the competition eliminated… and once purchased, that contract was magically forgotten. The argument was, those ventilators wouldn’t be profitable… and oops! Didn’t have to pay back the money, no one goes to court or jail or anything. Just a shrug and the deal was erased. If you or I, normal citizens, signed a massive contract to do ANYTHING and then bailed, your credit would be destroyed forever and you’d be in jail. But dirtbag healthcare companies? Nada.
This was started I believe in 2007, the company contracted in 2011, and then was bought in 2014. By the time a new process started again it was last year and normal expensive ventilators were contracted last year to be completed summer 2020… and the rest.
The companies in question are primarily
Covidien, but now all the rats are pointing fingers… Newport Medical was the original company bought by Covidien (who were the rivals and never held responsible) and Medtronic bought them out a few years later after this supposedly blew over, but are sort of on the hot seat now too.
All of these sales were over 100 million a pop, so again, nobody paid back the government, took responsibility, or proposed alternatives. Now they are all shifting blame, claiming the FDA blocked specifics, executives were moved.. blah blah blah. Fuck y’all, there’s going to be massive deaths across the country and these fuckers should all be in jail.
