Re: IT: Chapter 2 (September 6th, 2019)
I agree:
It?s not that IT Chapter Two isn?t scary, it?s that IT Chapter Two doesn?t even seem interested in being scary. It?s as though the filmmakers decided that the tone of the first movie was a little too dark, a little too tense, and decided to lighten it up? and they lightened it all the way up. There are a couple of moments that are intense ? the opening hate crime, for instance ? but almost every single scare in IT Chapter Two is either immediately undercut by a joke or is interrupted by a joke at its heaviest moment.
Somehow, Andy Muschietti turned IT Chapter Two into a comedy.
Look, comedy and horror are neighbors. They?re all about timing and tension and the release of that tension, just coming from different angles. Comedy-horror is often the hardest genre to pull off, despite the fact that comedy and horror seem to go along like peanut butter and chocolate. The larger problem is that the comedy almost always overwhelms the horror, and it takes a truly deft hand ? a Sam Raimi, for instance, to modulate just the right amount of yuks.
But there is a rule that I kind of believe in when it comes to comedy and horror ? yuks should turn into shrieks, and shrieks should rarely turn into yuks. You can take a scare scene and turn it into a laugh moment only if the atmosphere is so heavy, the scare so intense, that the audience needs a laugh. But a good scare scene is itself a laugh scene ? the audience leaping in fright is the release, and if you?ve ever been in the audience for an effective horror movie you?ve seen this in action ? the tension rises, the fright lands, the audience leaps? and then they laugh, both at their own reactions and to the feeling of the tension being expelled in a scream.
But it?s rare that a scary scene can effectively be turned into a funny scene. The comedy undercuts the horror, and you?re releasing tension just as fast as you?re building it. This is where IT Chapter Two has its weird tonal issues ? Muschietti wants to, without fail, turn a scary scene into a funny scene, but he almost never wants to take a funny scene ? and the way humor relaxes us ? and turn it into a weapon to frighten the audience.
Let?s take one scene as an example. Henry Bowers, sprung from prison by Pennywise the Dancing Clown and the living corpse of Hoftstetter, corners Losers Club member Eddie Kaspbarak in the bathroom at the inn where the Losers are all staying. Bowers drives his switchblade into Eddie?s cheek, a horrifying act of violence that happens suddenly. But rather than stay with the intensity, and build it, James Ransone plays the scene as a comedy beat; when he steps into the shower to hide from Bowers ? a trauma response ? Ransone has Eddie do a funny face as he pulls the shower curtain closed. It?s straight goofy, and it deflates the menace of the sequence. When Eddie stabs Bowers through the curtain it?s a laugh moment, and then as if this cake wasn?t iced enough, Eddie drops a zinger on his way out of the bathroom, mocking Bowers? mullet.
This scene isn?t bad, but it?s just not a horror movie scene. It could have supported the zinger at the end (although I feel like the movie made Eddie too funny), but I don?t think it can support the physical comedy in the shower. It?s like Muschietti doesn?t want you too upset about Eddie getting stabbed, because it would ruin the mood.
That mood, I think, is ?party movie.? This is a film designed to be experienced with a rowdy crowd, one that whoops and hollers and laughs a lot. Which is weird, because the movie is also a three hour long epic about the lasting echoes of trauma and eldritch gods who are child killers. IT Chapter Two is a truly bizarre tonal blend, and I think it?s largely the goodwill radiating from the first film and the excellent casting of the adult Losers Club that allows the darn thing to work at all.
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