It: Chapter Two (2019)
Film and Plot Synopsis
It: Chapter Two takes place 27 years after members of the Losers’ Club defeated Pennywise. The evil suddenly returns to terrorize the town of Derry, Maine, once again. Now adults, the childhood friends have long since gone their separate ways. However, when people start disappearing, Mike Hanlon calls the others home for one final stand. Damaged by scars from the past, the united Losers must conquer their deepest fears to destroy the shape-shifting Pennywise who now seems more powerful than ever.
‘It: Chapter Two’ Movie Summary
A short distance away, an adult Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) is listening to a police scanner and goes to investigate. Once there, he sees a message written in blood on the bridge, “Come Home”. Mike fears that Pennywise has returned, 27 years after he and his friends fought him in the clown’s lair under Derry. He returns home and calls his childhood friends, Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy), Ben Hanscom (Jay Ryan), Richie Tozier (Bill Hader), Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone), Stanley Uris (Andy Bean), and Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain). He asks each of them to come back and uphold the blood oath that they made to each other in the summer of 1989. Their promise to kill It.
While most of the group returns to Derry with vague recollections as to why they are coming back, Stanley chooses not to return and slashes his wrists in his bathtub after getting the call. The rest of the group meet for dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Derry, unaware of Stanley’s demise. Mike refreshes their memories. During the dinner, Pennywise begins to alter reality causing the group to see hallucinations. After the group sees the frightening images, they all wish to leave town. Beverly calls Stanley’s house and learns of his suicide from his wife.
Richie and Eddie are preparing to leave town when Beverly reveals that Stanley died just like she saw in her vision. Beverly reveals that while she was exposed to It’s deadlights as a child, she experienced visions of all of their deaths should they fail or leave town without fulfilling their promise. After being provided this information, Richie, Eddie, Ben, and Beverly decide to stay.
Mike takes Bill to his apartment in the library and shows Mike the Shokopiwah Native American tribe’s Ritual of Chüd, which Mike believes will stop Pennywise for good. When the others join them and agree to perform the ritual, Mike explains that they will need to find seven personal items from their past that will need to be sacrificed in order for the ritual to be successful.
Meanwhile, Pennywise stays busy himself. He kills a little girl at a local baseball game. He also helps Henry Bowers (Teach Grant) escape from an insane asylum. Bowers was the bully that tormented the Losers’ Club when they were children. After he was pushed down the well, Bowers washed out of Pennywise’s lair in one of the sewer drains and was subsequently arrested by the police for murdering his father. Pennywise has convinced the feeble minded Bowers that he needs to complete his quest to kill the Losers’ Club.
The group retrieves Stanley’s totem which is a shower cap that they find in their old underground clubhouse. The Losers split up to find each of their own individual totems. Beverly find’s Ben’s postcard with his poem at her old home. She still believes that Bill is the author. Ben retrieves the torn out page of his yearbook which Beverly, and only Beverly signed in 1989.
Richie retrieves a game token from the abandoned local arcade, and Eddie retrieves his inhaler from the pharmacy. Bill acquires the boat he made for Georgie from the storm drain where his brother was killed by Pennywise. Each of them recalls incidents from their childhood involving the clown that they had forgotten. Additionally, they all encounter the clown again as adults, although none of them are seriously injured. Although Eddie notices that when he stood up to the clown as an adult, the clown shrunk in size.
While Bill was acquiring his totem, he encounters a small boy named Dean (Luke Roessler) who lives in Bill’s childhood home. Bill tries to warn Dean to leave Derry, but the boy leaves and goes to the town carnival. When Bill returns to the group, he receives a message from Pennywise that he was too late for Dean as well. Bill runs off to save the young boy at the carnival. Bill encounters both Pennywise and Dean in the funhouse.
Pennywise kills Dean while Bill is forced to watch helplessly. Meanwhile, Henry Bowers attacks Eddie at the group’s hotel. He stabs Eddie in the face, but does not kill him. Eddie is able to pull the blade out of his face and stabs Bowers in the chest. Bowers retreats, while the others patch up Eddie. Bowers goes to the library and attacks Mike. He is about to kill Mike when Richie shows up and puts a tomahawk in the back of Bowers’ head, killing him.
The group waits for Bill to return. He calls them and says he is going to kill Pennywise alone. Bill says that he does not want anyone else to die for his crusade. The group rushes and meets him at the Neibolt house, where they entered the clown’s lair 27 years before. They descend into the caverns as a united group. They go further into the lair of Pennywise then they did previously.
They find the remains of the meteorite that brought It to Earth millions of years before. They perform the Ritual of Chüd, each of them throwing their totems into a fire. The ritual appears to work as they are able to trap the Deadlights in the Native American sealing jar. However, Pennywise is able to escape the jar and attacks the group in the form of a giant spider-like form.
Pennywise reveals that Mike has been lying to them the entire time by not telling them that the clown killed all the Native Americans who tried to imprison him years before. Mike tries to explain to his friends that they had a better chance in facing their fears, but the others are still angry with him. Pennywise is able to separate everyone from each other and places Bill, Beverly, and Ben in nightmare scenarios. Bill is able to get out of his scenario by overcoming the guilt he feels for Georgie’s death, and Ben and Beverly each get out of their scenarios by discovering their love for each other. When Mike gets caught by Pennywise, Richie is able to distract It by throwing rocks.
However, Richie falls under the catatonic spell of the deadlights until Eddie is able to throw a metal spear into Pennywise. Thinking he has killed the clown, Eddie begins to celebrate, but Pennywise is still alive and impales Eddie. Before he dies, Eddie reveals how he made it smaller before. The group begins taunting the clown, which causes him to reduce to about the size of an infant. Mike is able remove Pennywise’s heart from his chest, and the Losers crush the heart together as a group. The cavern begins to collapse and the group is barely able to get out of the Neibolt house before it is swallowed by the Earth.
In the aftermath, the group comforts Richie and he mourns over the loss if Eddie. It is revealed that Richie has secretly loved Eddie from afar his whole life. Ben and Beverly become a couple. Bill begins writing a new book, when he receives a call from Mike. Mike tells him that he finally leaving Derry to start a new life after keeping vigil for 27 years. They each receive a letter from Stanley, who wrote them before he committed suicide.
The letters reveal that he was too scared to deal with Pennywise again, and he knew that his overwhelming fear would have killed them all since they needed to be united. He writes that his suicide was actually meant to give his friends a fighting chance against Pennywise. In closing, Stanley tells his friends to live their lives to the fullest.
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Additional Film Information
- It: Chapter Two official website
- Peruse IMDb’s article on It: Chapter Two
- Learn more It: Chapter Two information at Wikipedia
- Get It: Chapter Two numbers at Box Office Mojo
- Find out what people think about It: Chapter Two at Metacritic
- Read It: Chapter Two reviews from the folks at Rotten Tomatoes
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New Line Cinema released It: Chapter Two on September 6, 2019. Andy Muschietti directed the film starring Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, and Bill Hader.