'It Chapter Two' Trailer Breakdown: "I Dreamt Of You. I Craved You. I've Missed You."
The full trailer for It Chapter Two arrived today, bringing with it a whole new cavalcade of terrors to give viewers nightmares. The sequel to 2017's It brings the Losers' Club back to Derry to battle Pennywise the Clown again. Will they finally succeed as adults? Or will Pennywise end up eating every last one of them? Our It Chapter Two trailer breakdown below delves into some of the film's secrets. Beware of spoilers.
The calm before the storm. The trailer begins on an almost pleasant note: an autumnal shot of Derry, and our old friends Bill (Jaeden Martell) and Bev (Sophia Lillis) riding on Bill's bike, with Bev clearly swooning a bit. This is a new scene, not something recycled from the first movie. "Something happens when we leave this town," a voice tells us. "The farther away, the hazier it gets."
That voice belongs to the adult Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa). "But me," Mike's voice-over continues. "I never left...I remember all of it." In Stephen King's novel, Mike remains in Derry while all the other members of the Losers' Club move away. He grows up to become a librarian, and spends his spare time chronicling all the terrible things that happened in town over the decades, and also remaining vigilant for the return of Pennywise. While the other adult Losers have forgotten their childhood battle with Pennywise the Clown, Mike's memory remains intact.
The impression I get from this trailer is that It Chapter Two is going to give Mike more to do, which is a good move. The first film received some criticism for sidelining Mike a bit more than the other Losers.
After a mostly benign intro, the It Chapter Two trailer then kicks into horror mode. We find ourselves in the sewer, and a wall of water comes rushing at us. We're soon watching a man splash violently around in that water, calling for help. I can't quite tell who this character is – but he's not one of the Losers. There's a good chance this is Xavier Dolan as Adrian Mellon, a gay man who is the victim of a hate crime attack, only to then be killed by Pennywise. The scene in the trailer is so quick and blurry, though, that we're not 100% sure this is Dolan. But whoever this poor sap is, he's in trouble, because waiting on the banks of the water is none other than Pennywise, eyes glowing, hand outstretched.
The adult Losers head down into the Barrens, in a shot very reminiscent of a shot from the first film.
In King's novel, the adult Losers reunite at a restaurant called Jade of the Orient – just as they do here. You can see the name of the restaurant on the placard on the table. Everyone seems to be having a pretty good time! It's almost as if none of them are concerned about the local murder clown.
The mood turns more somber as Mike reminds the group: "We made an oath." Cut to: the ending scene from the first film, as the young Losers join hands and swear to return to Derry if Pennywise is still alive (which we hear the young Bill talking about in voice over). This gives way to several dissolve shots that showcase the Losers as kids and adults, while also reminding us how freakin' good the casting is here.
Sophia Lillis as young Bev and Jessica Chastain as adult Bev.
Jeremy Ray Taylor as young Ben and Jay Ryan as adult Ben.
Jaeden Martell as young Bill and James McAvoy as adult Bill.
Jack Dylan Grazer as young Eddie and James Ransone as adult Eddie.
Chosen Jacobs as young Mike and Isaiah Mustafa as adult Mike.
Finn Wolfhard as young Richie and, in my favorite bit of casting in the film, Bill Hader as adult Richie.
"But wait, where's Stan?" you might be asking if you've somehow never read the novel or watched the 1990 miniseries. We'll get to him later. Worth noting: all of the shots of the young Losers here are taken from the first film.
Much like the first trailer, this new trailer stops everything to focus on one somewhat lengthy scene. Bill ends up at a carnival, inside a funhouse – and this is sure to be one memorable set-piece from the movie. Fun fact: the swinging clowns in the funhouse are dressed in the same costume that Tim Curry wore as Pennywise in the It miniseries.
Bill ends up in a hall of mirrors, chasing after some random kid wandering around on his own. Hey, kid, don't you know there's a KILLER CLOWN around? If he didn't before, he does now – because Pennywise shows up and shows off a big tongue that would make Venom jealous. He also morphs into something extra-terrifying. This entire scene plays out in a highly effective manner. I particularly like how desperate Bill gets as he's trying to break through the glass to save this kid. This is not a scene from King's novel, indicating that like the first film, this adaptation will diverge from the source material.
The adult Losers (with a visibly injured Eddie) gather outside the House on Neibolt Street, where they encountered Pennywise so many years ago. This kicks off a rather thirsty monologue from Pennywise himself: "For 27 years, I dreamt of you. I craved you. I've missed you!"
During the Pennywise monologue, we get a shot of a balloon floating by a window of what appears to be a hospital. Inside, people are freaking out – notably one man being pulled away. This is the adult Henry Bowers, now played by Teach Grant. In King's novel, Henry was blamed for all the murders Pennywise committed when the Losers were kids, and he was locked up in the Juniper Hills mental hospital. It'll be interesting to see how the film explains Henry's survival, since the first film really made it look like he died when he fell down a well.
From here the trailer runs through the modern day trailer ending format: shots of random stuff out of context, some of which appeared in the previous trailer – so I won't share them here. One thing I will highlight: the return of the refrigerator that Pennywise came tumbling out of in the previous movie. King's novel also features a spooky abandoned fridge that a sociopathic kid named Patrick Hocksetter used to trap and kill animals in. Patrick had a part in the previous film, but his use of the fridge wasn't adapted there.
The Losers gather in the sewers, and come across some...strange shape. It almost looks like the remains of some giant dinosaur, but that can't be right. Whatever it is, it's weird, and I dig it. King's novel has an entire subplot about this giant metaphysical turtle (yeah, it's weird) that invented the universe, and when the Losers come back to Derry as adults, they learn the turtle has died. A part of me wonders if that's what this is supposed to be – the corpse of that giant turtle. But...I doubt it.
Poor Bev ends up drowning in blood at one point. This is likely a callback to the first film, in which gallons and gallons of blood came exploding out of the young Bev's bathroom sink. Earlier this year, while appearing on The Tonight Show, Chastain said:
"I'm going say something and I think I'm gonna be in trouble but I'm gonna do it. It might be a spoiler, but in the movie there's a scene...someone said on set that it's the most blood that's ever been in a horror film...in a scene. The next day I was pulling blood out of my eyeballs."
Even as an adult, poor Bill finds himself haunted by the ghost of his dead brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott).
A neat mirror shot where we see Pennywise attacking Ben, and Bev smashing a mirror (likely to make the clown vanish in some way – I'm guessing he's only appearing in the mirror, not in the room itself).
The Losers standing in the midst of some strange H.R. Giger-like structure. They might be in the midst of performing something called the Ritual of Chud – a very strange, hard-to-explain action that could kill Pennywise once and for all.
Bev is attacked underwater by some sort of creature that looks a lot like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. It's probably not him, though. Maybe.
The Losers flee in terror as the underground location they're in – likely Pennywise's lair – begins to crumble around them. This is no doubt from the conclusion of the film.
Mike, screaming his head off in some sort of tented structure. There's a scene in King's novel where the young Mike and Richie end up in something called a smoke hole, and have a vision of Pennywise arriving on Earth millions and millions of years ago. A part of me thinks that might be what's being referenced here, but the moment is so quick and fleeting that it's hard to be sure.
Richie, looking really filthy, freaking the fuck out. My guess: this is from the end of the film, after the Losers have lost one of their own in their battle with Pennywise. I'm not going to say who, though.
Speaking of Losers who don't make it, here's the answer to what happened to Stan. This quick glimpse of a bloody hand hanging over a bathtub is no doubt from the scene in which the adult Stan (Andy Bean) opts to kill himself rather than return home to Derry.
Pennywise is standing above ground, ready to slam a door built into the ground. In the It novel, the Losers – as kids – build a clubhouse in the Barrens in the ground itself, with a door mounted on the top. I'm assuming that's what this is, even though we didn't see that clubhouse in the first film.
The It Chapter Two trailer concludes with his nasty shot of Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise in some half-finished form. This is another thing not from the novel, so I can't say with any certainty what's going on here. I will note that the clothes the character is wearing, and the items in the background – an oil lamp, for instance – are particularly old timey, suggesting this is some sort of flashback to Pennywise's early days in Derry.
It Chapter Two opens September 6, 2019.