Movie Review: IT Chapter Two

Thought to be defeated by the members of the Losers’ Club, Pennywise the dancing clown has returned twenty-seven years later to terrorize the town of Derry, Maine, and movie audience members across the nation. While this sequel may not surpass its predecessor’s record-breaking box office success, it shoots for the stars - unfortunately proving that bigger isn’t always better. A heavy reliance on acting performances is what keeps this overly complicated story afloat.

This movie just isn’t as good as the simplicity as the first installment. As a disclaimer, I have not yet read the source material, Stephen King’s novel, so any of my criticism of this movie that relates to the novel is unintentional. That being said, the story and information given to the audience is overcomplicated and hard to follow throughout this movie. Having more of an understanding of Pennywise’s backstory and motives would’ve been intriguing to me, but instead that is glossed over in favor of ancient rituals which end up not amounting to much of anything. More scares and less exposition would’ve made this an easier watch.

That isn’t to say that it’s all bad. I enjoyed the “artifact finding” portion of this movie, which gave exposure and backstory to all of the well-cast adult versions of the child characters we grew to love in the first movie. Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain, and Jay Ryan give stellar performances here, in my opinion, and are the life vests to an otherwise complicated and long movie. There is more than enough comedic relief for the amount of scares, but the scares included are clever and innovative enough.

The almost three hour runtime feels unnecessary and a somewhat unsatisfactory and anticlimactic ending doesn’t supply the payoff that this series could’ve had to offer. At the same time, there is a nice moral to the end of the story, that accompanied by laughs, amazing special effects, and the occasional scare, keeps IT worthwhile and worth watching. I didn’t love everything about this movie, and in fact there’s quite a bit that I would’ve changed, but I’m glad that I saw it and was able to enjoy the best of what it had to offer. Also, the amount of red balloons I spotted before and after seeing this movie is quite unsettling. Now counting down until JOKER - spooky season is almost upon us.

SCORE: 5/10