IT Chapter Two review. 5/7 knives

Hey there, Peter here. This is part 2 of the It review. While you won’t need to read it, it would be recommended if you want to fully understand my take on this movie.

The movies are a bit separated in terms of content, as this has the background knowledge but the previous film did much more with its time. Speaking of time, this movie is a whopping 3 hours long. 3 hours?! That means combined IT is less than 6 hours! It’d feel shorter if they included the flashback scenes into the last film, giving us an even mix of both in both movies.

With that out of the way, welcome to Slash IT horror and this is the IT 2 review.

The way I’d describe this movie is mediocre, leaning towards good. I feel it takes great strides over the original, but it sacrifices much more and has a lot of repetition when you watch both movies.

Now, with that being said, is “IT Chapter 2” bad? No. It has good qualities as I said and certainly didn’t deserve the backlash it got at release, but certainly deserved some criticism. How so? How about the length. Sorry, I’m talking about this so much but it is just about 3 hours and yet acts more of a backstory than an actual story! The flashbacks describe the context IT 1 so desperately needed, then adds sequel content to live up to its name.

That’s why I don’t like this movie as much as the original, it tries too hard to cover the bases of the other movie and ends up pleasing no one for the sequel. With that being said, the acting is superb. All the characters are relatively well written, with great actors that were actually chosen by the cast of the last movie. Even better, Stephen King joined the writing!

So why am I less than thrilled? Well, that’s what our spoilers are for. The reason this section comes early is that the movie is really long, at least when trying to review it. I do want to point out before that this is going to be a tad short, at least shorter than the other. I’m going to cut some of the flashbacks as you should get the idea once I mention it once, then again, and again…

Anyways, onto the movie.

SPOILERS

The movie starts with an uncomfortable amount of violence and sexual content. Again, I know it was written by Stephen King but still...was this necessary? We once again have great cinematography and the environment really shines here, which we’ll come back to later. Pennywise has been dormant for so long that most have forgotten, but not Mike. He stayed, and it’s a good thing. A gay couple is beaten on the streets at night, away from cops of course. They end up near the water and Adrian, the partner, is drowning and near death. Perfect for Pennywise. I gotta say this first kill was set up fine and all but I still don’t like this insistent trend in King’s stories of minority groups getting beaten. Whatever though, opening credits and boom. Mike starts to reassemble the group, leading to a nice montage of calling our cast and seeing the adult versions of them. I thought this was handled about as well as to be expected. They all give a great vibe and match personalities as their younger counterparts, especially Richie.

Stanley however, would meet another fate. After being called by Mike, and remembering the horrors he went through, it was too much. This may be a bit much for younger audiences, but he decides to kill himself and slits his wrists, dying in the bathtub while writing in the deleted scenes marked ‘Pennywise is here’.

The group does eventually meet up. For a while they don't notice Stanley’s disappearance, they’re just having fun drinking and telling stories of their lives 27 years later. The story starts to unfold subtly as scares happen more often. Then, they all open their fortune cookies, each with a word. Ironically they just happen to solve it as soon as Stanley is reported dead, leading to a cryptic message of Stanley ‘not making the cut’. Long story short, they leave the restaurant out of fear of Pennywise’s return. The jump scares are pretty average and predictable. There’s not too much else to complain about, as Mike explains to the group how to truly defeat Pennywise. This would lead to what is easily the most drooling part of the movie, in which we have to see all the characters go on a journey to their past to unlock a piece of a puzzle. What this puzzle is used for is never really explained, although I have my own theory I’ll explain later. Each journey is pretty cool, with its own environment and specific scares tied to each character. I don’t understand why they went out of their way to make all of the journeys have a long flashback, it honestly seems like padding out time. I don’t have time to explain each of them in-depth, so in short, I’ll explain them in key points as best I can.

Ben- back to the school to recollect his ember flame poem he wrote

Bill- back to his childhood home to warn a child of a fate that George had

Richie- clown CGI battle (This does give a HUGE piece of critical information though)

Mike- ???

Beverly- back to getting bullied.

I tried my best to explain those but honestly, they make no sense and just pad out the already dreadful three hours. The group gets the pieces from their past, and they also happen to regain their memories. This leads Bill to come to the conclusion he needs to save a child at a carnival…how? Again, more loose plot threads. Anyways, he gets there and sees the child from his journey heading into a hellish carnival ‘ride’ that has a bunch of spiral mirrors. This leads to a bunch of illusions before Bill sees the child locked behind a mirror. Pennywise is on the other side banging his head to get in, and they end up shying away from the kill. I hate that they keep doing this for R-rated series, you can’t really experience the kills if you never truly see them. Whatever once again, he fails and heads back.

We are near the finale: the final boss. Pennywise 2!

Now this boss battle, if you can call it that, starts off far better than the first. I really enjoy how Pennywise is a giant compared to the cast and how he manages to take out Eddie. finally a kill of the cast other than suicide! This also reveals to us how Richie truly felt and how he, guess what was gay! This is exactly why he avoided discussing romantic relations at all in this movie, another subtle touch.

After Eddie is murdered the group starts to get mad and call Pennywise names. I kid you not, names. This shows how they’ve grown but I never understood this, they almost bully IT and he just shrinks? Why didn’t he collapse the cave on them? Whatever though, they start bullying him back to normal size and eventually baby size before tearing his heart out like a mortal kombat fatality! It’s a cool scene and leads to the cave exploding.

As they escape, we see Eddie’s body abandoned, and stuck down there for the rest of time. Rest In Peace.

Finally, we are at the end. Wow, end of a trilogy? If you can even call it that if the IT chapter 3 prequel does come. Now the movie isn’t all bad, despite me primarily talking about negatives here. My point here is just that we can’t let horror films continue to decline in quality. . Horror is a great genre and should be treated with dignity.

I give IT chapter 2 a 5/7, just short of 5.5/7 from another review. It has good kills and is somewhat interesting, but wastes too much time covering what the last movie should’ve done, to begin with. It feels like It 2 could’ve been a prequel and 3 would end the trilogy. That’s just my opinion though, thanks for reading the conclusion of this two-part review!