New 'It Chapter Two' trailer shows why the sequel will be the bloodiest movie in Hollywood history: '"Carrie" on steroids'

Ethan Alter
·Senior Writer, Yahoo Entertainment
Updated

Move over The Shining and take a walk Carrie, It Chapter Two is seeing your elevator full of blood and Prom Night massacre and raising the stakes by a few thousand gallons. A just-released trailer for the highly-anticipated sequel to the 2017 blockbuster — based on Stephen King’s beloved 1986 novel — offers a small taste of the bloodshed that’s in store when the grown-up Losers return to Derry, Maine, to face off against their childhood nemesis, Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård). (Watch the trailer above.)

One of those Losers is Jessica Chastain, who is definitely a winner when it comes to the cast member that spent the most time in the sticky red stuff. Speaking at San Diego Comic-Con — where the trailer had its world premiere — the Oscar-nominated actress described a scene that required her to be covered in blood up to, and over, her head. “I was like, ‘No, if we’re going to do it, let’s do it. I love horror films, I love Carrie, and I said, ‘Let’s make Carrie on steroids. And that’s what we did and it literally tortured me because I didn’t realize that it would be that way the whole movie.”

In the end, director Andy Muschietti spilled some 4,500 gallons in the making of It Chapter Two, which takes place 27 years after the events of the first movie. That’s potentially a new Hollywood record, handily topping such would-be heirs to the red throne as 2012’s Cabin in the Woods. “I would make jokes of it and make slow-motion videos of me pouring blood all over my body,” Chastain told the SDCC crowd.

While Pennywise is facing off against adult versions of the Losers in the sequel, their younger selves aren’t far away. The trailer indicates that the young cast of It Chapter One — including Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard and Nancy Drew’s Sophia Lillis — still have significant roles to play here. That only makes sense, as one of the themes King explored in the book is the way that our childhood fears can inform the adults we become.

Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment in 2015, the horror legend described William Golding’s Lord of the Flies as a profound influence on It : “[Lord of the Flies] is a book about childhood for grown-ups. I thought to myself that I’d really like to write a story about what’s lost and what’s gained when you grow up from childhood to adulthood, and also, the things we experience in childhood that are like seeds that blossom later on.”

Pennywise may be an immortal form of evil, but he’s looking awfully human at the end of the trailer. In a much commented-upon shot, Skarsgård’s features are clearly visible beneath clown facepaint, which has Twitter all kinds of freaked out.

Apparently, they have good reason to be freaked out. The It Chapter Two cast described how their co-star — who wasn’t in San Diego, Calif. for the new trailer’s debut — relished the opportunity to scare them both on and off-camera. James McAvoy told the crowd that he developed tendonitis after having to run away from Skarsgård. And Bill Hader said that the actor photobombed a FaceTime session with his kids. “Bill came up behind me, and my daughter went, ‘What was that?!’” Leave it to Pennywise to give kids a bloody good scare.

It Chapter Two opens in theaters on Sept. 6.

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