It Chapter Two

1 THE ATTACK

John Nugent: Chapter Two’s shocking opening sequence sees a gay couple (played by Taylor Frey and LGBT actor/filmmaker Xavier Dolan) subjected to a devastating homophobic attack — only for one of the victims to then suffer a demonic clown one, too. Reactions to this sequence have been mixed, but whether it oversteps the line for you or not, it’s a pretty faithful recreation of the scene from the book, closely based on the real-life hate crime that killed Charlie Howard, a gay man from Bangor, Maine — Stephen King’s hometown, and the loose inspiration for Derry — in 1984. The event weighed heavily on King, and his commentary on small-town intolerance feels more depressingly relevant than ever. Whether you felt the violence was exploitative or necessary, it’s unlikely to leave your memory for some time.

2 PETER BOGDANOVICH

This is a film about sewer-aliens who feed on fear. Yet the weirdest thing in.