It Chapter Two: The Losers Are Bigger, and So Is the Clown

Jeremy BeckReviews
Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in "It Chapter Two"

Size matters in It Chapter Two, and that’s bad news for everyone, unless you’re a special-effects technician or Paul Bunyan. Big, loud, and long—but not powerful, memorable, or scary—Andy Muschietti’s follow-up to his 2017 smash hit completes the saga of six misfits and their supernatural battle against one angry clown. But while this sequel flashes forward 27 years, alighting on the members of the self-proclaimed Losers Club as disenchanted adults, its sensibility is distinctly childlike. Dismissive of subtlety and ignorant of tension, Chapter Two stomps around wildly, craving your attention and desperate for your dread. Its creepy clown—named Pennywise, of course, and again played by Bill Skarsgård with streaks of red gashing his pasty-white makeup—may remain a force of malevolent evil, but at times he seems less like the movie’s villain than its spirit animal.

Not that he’s around all that much. In fact, aside from the prologue—in which a pleasant evening at a carnival turns icky and gory, with a paranormal murder preceded by a vulgar, distinctly human hate crime—Pennywise is a nonentity for most of Chapter Two, lurking in the periphery or cloaking himself in other forms of varying ghastliness. It’s an approach that makes some theoretical sense; the clown is such a nightmarish symbol, Muschietti doesn’t want to dilute his gruesome power through overuse. And his solution—to terrorize his characters, and his audience, by subjecting them to a twisted menagerie of misshapen monsters—might have worked, had the director exhibited some grasp of how to transfigure computer-generated phantasms into genuine fright. Read More

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Luce: He’s Black and They’re Proud

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kelvin Harrison Jr. in "Luce"

He’s the valedictorian. His teachers often ask him to give inspirational speeches, which he delivers with disarming sincerity. He’s also a star athlete, a sprinter who runs in the upright style of Michael Johnson. And he excels on the debate team, where he presents his lucid arguments with a confidence that never slips into arrogance. His name is Luce, and as the school principal puts it, he is the very definition of a model student.

And Luce, while an imperfect film, feels similarly paradigmatic. Coursing with energy, insight, and relevance, it is exactly the kind of movie that American audiences should be watching right now, as the world burns and cultures clash. Unashamedly provocative, it is designed not to shame but to stimulate, to inspire discussion and reflection. It asks complex questions—about race, sex, drugs, criminal justice, even the platonic conception of the American dream—and then demands that you hunt for the answers. It holds up a mirror to the country and forces you to confront what you see. Read More

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Ready or Not: Here Come the Wealthy Satanists

Jeremy BeckReviews
Samara Weaving in "Ready or Not"

The rich really are different in Ready or Not, a bloody—and bloody-fun—satire of the American aristocracy. Every family has its quirky rituals, but the Le Domas clan—the coterie of smarmy blue bloods depicted here—is so accustomed to disposing of dead bodies, they instinctively toss a coin whenever they encounter a fresh corpse, a literal delegation of heads or tails. And if you think you’ve ever struggled to fit in with your moneyed in-laws, at least your great aunt has never charged at you while wielding a giant battle axe.

That’s just one of many daunting challenges faced by Grace (Samara Weaving), the heroine of this grisly, giddy tale. When the movie opens, she’s steeling herself for a different sort of nightmare: marrying into the Le Domas empire following a whirlwind romance with Alex (City on a Hill’s Mark O’Brien), one of the scions of the famous gaming dynasty. (“We prefer dominion,” he gently corrects her.) And if you strip away the brutal prologue, which finds a five-year-old Alex hiding in a closet while his relatives coolly murder a well-dressed man, the opening act of Ready or Not could perhaps be mistaken for a fish-out-of-water comedy, along with a send-up of the rich and brainless. Read More

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Good Boys: Sex and Drugs and Gender Roles

Jeremy BeckReviews
Brady Noon, Jacob Tremblay, and Keith L. Williams in "Good Boys"

There are multiple levels of storytelling at work in Good Boys, and multiple levels of posturing as well. Directed by Gene Stupnitsky from a script he wrote with Lee Eisenberg, the movie follows three hapless sixth-graders in their desperate attempts to prove their sexual and narcotic bona fides. Their false bravado—one routine boast revolves around taking multiple sips of beer—is reflective of Good Boys itself, which bills itself as a raunchy sex comedy but whose primary focus is aging and friendship. Sure, there are filthy jokes and excruciating embarrassments, but underlying all of the gross-out humor and bawdy mishaps is a foundation of concentrated, sugary sweetness. It’s a gentle lamb dressed up in a horny wolf’s clothing.

“Superbad for tweens” is a simplified but nonetheless accurate logline here, and not just because Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg serve as producers. Much like how that 2007 mainstay used two teens’ frantic efforts as the scaffolding for its poignant exploration of a longtime but quietly fraying relationship, Good Boys wields its “one crazy misadventure” premise to mine tension and pathos. The key difference is that, thanks to their pubescent status, the heroes of Good Boys aren’t just sexually inexperienced; they’re sexually clueless. Read More

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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Book Smart, Kids Dumb

Jeremy BeckReviews
The kids are not all right.

Less teenage horror movie than lightly creepy seminar, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark functions as a kind of starter kit for curious viewers looking to dabble in the cinema of fright. Cogently threading together a handful of spooky tales lifted from Alvin Schwartz’s famous anthology of the same name, this passable imitator assembles the building blocks of classic fear fests, then nudges them into predictable, clockwork motion. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, which may be why it seems geared toward horror virgins—the innocent few who really haven’t seen this stuff before. As an example of the genre, it’s pedestrian; as an introduction to it, it’s effective.

The director André Øvredal has a keen understanding of the essential elements, which he draws together with workmanlike efficiency. There is a haunted house, complete with creaky hinges, dark closets, and a cavernous basement. There is a cornfield, the rows upon ominous rows of crops lorded over by an ugly, unsmiling scarecrow. There are rusty wheelchairs, slowly turning doorknobs, and long, spindly shadows that emanate from nowhere, stretching menacingly across cobwebbed walls. And then there are the more visible and corporeal terrors: wriggling spiders; reanimated corpses; Richard Nixon. Read More

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