IT Chapter 2 features a genuinely shocking opening scene, but the rest of the Stephen King sequel fails to live up to its brutal promise. Released in 2017, IT Chapter 1 was a blockbuster movie adaptation of Carrie creator Stephen King’s bestselling doorstopper of the same name. IT told the tale of the Losers Club, a group of childhood friends who defeat Pennywise the Dancing Clown, a monstrous being responsible for all manner of murder, violence, and hate in their home town of Derry, Maine.
Bouncing between the kid’s original face-off with Pennywise and their reunion when he returns 27 years later, the ambitious novel IT was originally adapted as a television miniseries in 1990. However, despite remaining an iconic early horror experience for many ‘90s kids, this adaptation of IT was far from perfect. Elevated by a terrifying, but also hilarious turn from Tim Curry as Pennywise, the original miniseries was bogged down by endless backstory, unconvincing effects, and uneven performances from the adult cast.
As such, the novel was ripe for a new adaptation when the Andy Muschietti-helmed IT Chapter 1 arrived in 2017. Combining sweet coming-of-age nostalgia with surprisingly effective horror sequences, IT was a success with audiences and critics alike. Released in September 2019, the sequel IT Chapter 2 (which chronicled the adult reunion of the original’s teen cast) at first promised an equally effective follow-up. However, after a stellar opening scene, the movie failed to recapture the ferocious, harrowing tone the opener established.
IT Chapter Two’s Opening Scene Explained
The opening scene of IT Chapter 2 features an unsettlingly realistic brand of horror than the Nightmare On Elm Street-style fantasy of the movie’s predecessor. While the sight of Pennywise pulling a poker from his skull was undeniably scary, the explicit hate crime depicted in the opening of IT Chapter 2 is realistic, upsetting, and hard to watch. Based on the real-life murder of Charlie Howard who was beaten to death and drowned by homophobic bullies in the mid-‘80s, the sequence garnered the sequel a lot of criticism upon release due to its intense content. However, the biggest problem with Chapter 2’s opening scene is not actually the shocking sequence is out of place, but rather that the surrounding movie should have endeavored to match the scene’s dark, brutal tone.
IT Chapter 2 Is Lighter Than Chapter 1
It's perhaps understandable, given how well the lighter tone of fellow ‘80s horror hit Stranger Things’ later seasons were received, that the creators of IT Chapter 2 wanted a more fun follow-up. From the goofy shenanigans of the Chinese restaurant scene to the sidelining of Beverly’s abusive husband subplot (not to mention the infamously silly “Angel of the Morning” scene), IT Chapter 2 skews toward a funnier tone than IT Chapter 1 throughout its lengthy runtime. This tonal shift is not a bad thing in itself (although this does make the first film scarier in comparison), but the decision blunts the effectiveness of Pennywise as a villain, making the opening scene feel wildly out of place.
IT Chapter 2’s Opening Scene Is Missing Its Novel Context
In the source novel, the murder of Adrian Mellon is as upsetting as it appears onscreen in IT Chapter 2, but it is contextualized by a significant amount of equally upsetting, realistically portrayed atrocities. Beverly’s abuse from her father and later from her husband, the racism of Henry Bowers, and the sadistic animal abuse enacted by his friend Patrick Hockstetter all conspire to make the scenes of violent homophobia feel horribly at home in the Derry. In contrast, in the movie version of IT Chapter 2, Derry is home to a goofy monster that switches between being a spooky old lady and a sentient lumberjack statue, making the vile hate crime of the opening just feel bizarrely out-of-place with the rest of the movie.
Pennywise Is (Originally) A Metaphorical Monster
Both the novel and the movie adaptations of IT are rich with the allegory King is famous for, and in the original novel, it is clear Pennywise represents racism, ignorance, prejudice, homophobia, and misogyny lurking beneath the cheery veneer of all-American suburbia. Many King adaptations stray from his original texts, but in the case of IT Chapter 2, jettisoning the connection between Pennywise and the problems he represents makes the opening murder hard to justify or place in context. In the movie adaptations of IT, the first film’s lessened focus on racism toward Mike Hanlon and increased focus on Beverly’s abusive dad means Pennywise comes to represent personal traumas more than broad social ills.
As a result, the sequel's attempts to add a subtextual gay relationship between Eddie and Richie - while admirable and elevated by a moving performance from Bill Hader as the closeted adult Richie - feels somewhat tacked on. This problem is particularly egregious when their connection is mostly established via flashbacks that were not included in the first film. Pennywise doesn’t represent the small-minded homophobia or religious zealotry King earlier criticized in The Mist that kept the pair from expressing their affection for each other in the first film, so the sequel’s attempts to add this connection feels unearned.
It Chapter 2’s Pennywise Isn’t Realistic (Until He Is)
Appearing as a lurching leper, a haunted painting, and even an evil librarian all check out for Pennywise in the original movie, where his victims are kids who still have childhood ideas of what best represents fear. However, in IT Chapter 2 the adult Loser’s Club continues to envision Pennywise as even more over-the-top and ludicrous monsters like Bev’s old lady ghoul, the giant lumberjack, and the now-puking leper - except for the scene where Pennywise is portrayed as the force animating a group of teens to brutally murder a man for his sexuality.
This leap ruins the Stephen King villain as the opening scene offers a conceptual interpretation of Pennywise’s power that jars with the rest of the movie’s “he’s a big spider/a clown/a scary zombie.” Making Pennywise embody the sort of mindless cruelty of an atrocious hate crime could have made him scarier, more ineffable, and more resonant. However, using Pennywise’s power as a metaphor for social ills once in a movie that otherwise presents the clown as a Freddy Krueger-style shape-shifting ghoul makes IT Chapter 2’s opening a promise of a darker, scarier movie that never happens.