It Chapter Two (2019)
Directed by Andy Muschietti
27 years after overcoming the malevolent supernatural entity Pennywise, the former members of the Losers' Club, who have grown up and moved away from Derry, are brought back together by a devastating phone call.
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8 films that influenced It Chapter Two
What critics say influenced It Chapter Two
As one of the now grownup Losers Club puts it (in a droll homage to John Carpenter’s The Thing), “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”
(All this despite an unfurling of horror references onscreen, including a sequence that takes a page from The Thing .)
Muschietti once again gets excellent performances from his young cast, and his visual touches often recall John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982).
From giant, drooling clowns to grotesque insect apparitions and spiderlike shape-shifters, It Chapter Two doesn’t skimp on the funhouse theatrics, even riffing on a quotable moment from John Carpenter’s The Thing , which remains a monstrous benchmark for mind-bending 80s horror.
Muschietti also adds amusing cameos by King and legendary director Peter Bogdanovich — as himself, apparently — amid cool visual references to Ridley Scott’s Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing , among other famous flicks.
The films “The Thing,” “Carrie,” “The Shining” and the “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise all get shoutouts as well — and those are just the references I caught during a single viewing.
The film’s design tips its hat to inspiration ranging from 1987’s “The Lost Boys” to 18th century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
There are also gallons of blood flowing, and a real sense of impending danger throughout even when references to The Lost Boys or You’ve Got Mail (surely this is the first movie to feature both?) abound.
It's all interlaced with an emotionally impactful story about friendship and deeply buried secrets and memories that has shades of the 1987 horrors The Lost Boys and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors .
But Muschietti directs this scene with a prurient vibe that makes it feel more tonally in line with the famously sleazy 1980 gay-bash thriller Cruising .
There are also gallons of blood flowing, and a real sense of impending danger throughout even when references to The Lost Boys or You’ve Got Mail (surely this is the first movie to feature both?) abound.
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Adventures as epic and terrifying as that of The Goonies , Stand By Me , Monster House and It are ones through which we can live vicariously.
(Imagine if something like Midsommar or Goodnight Mommy made as much, or were watched as much, as a Marvel movie.)
Now, successful adults, they don't even remember the events that occurred or the promise they made until they get a call from Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa; Horrible Bosses) telling them to come home because the pattern has started again and children are going missing.
At 169 minutes, it sets a record for longest theatrically-released mainstream English language horror movie, displacing the Suspiria remake (152 minutes), the longest cut of The Shining (146 minutes), and the comparatively trim The Conjuring 2 (135 minutes).