IT CHAPTER TWO

It Chapter Two Movie Review

27 years after fighting Pennywise, the Losers Club reunites to once again take on the demented clown. This is the long-awaited second chapter of the 2017 film It, a movie that rapidly climbed my list of all-time favorite horror movies. Is this movie as good as the first part? No, it's not. However, after having watched the first movie a few times, you really couldn't expect the second part to be THAT good--rest assured readers, this is a fitting second part to the story. The first thing you will likely notice is the wonderful job casting did with the adult versions of the kids we know from the first chapter--it is easy to recognize each character in their adult form without having to be told who they are. James McAvoy (Split, the X-Men franchise) is the adult version of Bill, and he does a phenomenal job--especially cool and somewhat subtle is how his stutter gets worse the more he remembers his childhood. Bill Skarsgard returns as Pennywise, but we don't see a whole lot of him--sadly, much of what we get in way of Pennywise and his many shape-shifting forms is CGI that is impressive at times, but very questionable for the most part. This results in far fewer actual scary moments in this movie as compared to the Chapter One, and for as cool as the individual elements of this story are, it's the scares we really come for.

The eyes are always scary though

Naturally, with 27 years having passed, the nostalgic awesomeness we got in the previous movie is gone, and the adults versions of the same characters do not come close to having the same chemistry we saw from the children in the the first chapter. The kids, slightly aged, do return for some new scenes, which I found to be a nice surprise. Many will complain about the runtime of the movie, and at 169 minutes, one can understand why. The movie is long, but it flows nicely, and as I was not keeping track of the time, I was personally surprised when my girlfriend told me that was how long the movie was--I have watched MANY movies clocking in at just 90 minutes that felt much longer than this one. The only part of the movie I felt dragged on was the very end, right after the somewhat disappointing final confrontation with the dancing clown--see my comments about the questionable CGI above. It Chapter Two is not a perfect follow-up to the first chapter, but it does the job. Let's face it--none of us expected the second part of the story to be as good as the first part anyway.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 7

It Chapter Two Movie Trailer