It: Chapter 2

“There’s an echo that’s here in Derry. It bounces back every 27 years.”

Mike

When it comes to horror films, they’re extremely hit or miss with me, I like several of the older films such as The Shining, Psycho, and many of the classic monster films, but most of the new ones (with the exception of the 2018 Halloween sequel) I don’t usually like them too much. It: Chapter 1 was the first horror film I sucked it up and saw in theaters and I really liked it the first time around. I had never experienced horror on the big screen before, so it was a fresh new experience and I enjoyed myself. However upon re-watching it I liked it significantly less once I realized the entire film is all jump scares and none of the main characters were ever in any real danger. Stuff would just kind of happen and stop as suddenly as it started and didn’t give me any on-edge feelings like it did the first time, where other films such as The Shining I still get equally as tense no matter how many times I’ve seen it (fingers crossed for Doctor Sleep). After toughing out It for my first time and realizing it was a two part film (I’ve never seen the tv-series or read the book so I had no idea), I knew I’d have to tough it out one more time and watch these kids face there fears once again as adults.

As movies usually go, kids are usually spared from real danger, so I expected this film to be even scarier since Pennywise would be preying on the adult versions of these characters, I expected nothing to be held back. I unfortunately was disappointed as it repeated the same basic formula as the first film, lots of jump scares but it mostly felt like Pennywise toying with the characters with almost no payoff to the scares. They happened so frequently I found myself zoning out for a lot of them and not really reacting in the way that I think the director intended me to (I’m pretty awful when it comes to horror films, usually watching from between my knees so it’s not a good thing when I’m not jumping during a horror film).

The film’s run time is also very long, almost 3 hours but the pacing I felt was pretty bad. It starts off pretty rushed, but then drastically slows down as we enter the second act. There’s a huge chunk close to the halfway point that takes each of our characters individually to places where they grew up to find “tokens” in order to help them accomplish their goal. This part takes very long, as we spend what feels like 5-10 full minutes with each character as they go through the exact same formula of reminiscing their childhood, Pennywise toying with them, and trying to find their token over and over again. This series of scenes wouldn’t be an issue if there was only 2 or 3 characters, but we take the time to individually follow all 6 characters. There’s also a place we go to that I feel like was supposed to be impactful and nostalgic but it’s a location never shown in the first film (maybe it’s in the tv-series?), but I also thought we spent way too much time in that particular location.

On a positive note, there is one scene in particular in a fairground that stood out to me as for sure being the best scene in the entire movie, I felt it was very tense and wasn’t sure how it was going to play out and I felt very on the edge of my seat, but unfortunately that’s the only scene I felt that way for. All the actors I felt did a really good job portraying the personalities of their child counterparts, it took me a few minutes to connect who everyone was, but it didn’t take me super long. Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise was once again phenomenal, every time he was on screen I was excited to see what he’d do next, and he was very believable and extremely unsettling. The VFX in this film I thought were alright, although I think they might be purposely like that to give the scenes an even more uneasy feeling to them so I won’t knock that too much just in case.

Keep in mind that I’ve never seen the tv-series or read the book so maybe some of this film would’ve resonated with me more if I had, but I’m not sure. This movie goes so far beyond where I was expecting it to go, and there was parts where I wasn’t even sure what was going on anymore. Overall, I gave It: Chapter 2 a 2/10, I didn’t find it very scary, the jump scares got almost annoying, and I thought it took things in a really weird direction. What did you think of the conclusion of It? Was the ending better having read the book or seen the original series? Let me know in the comments!