Everything which mad It: Chapter One special and fun is missing from Chapter Two

Rating: 2/10 (9 September 2019)

It: Chapter One felt a lot like an adventure film; tonally it was closer to what you would expect from a Stranger Things movie than a typical Stephen King adaptation. This made the first film enjoyable for a wide audience, the jump scares and the horror was mixed in with childish banter and fun montage sequences (even when the losers club cleans Bev's blood-soaked bathroom the scene makes you feel good); it's a film which is ultimately about friendship and the potential for togetherness to overcome evil. It: Chapter Two fails to properly recognise that this is what made the first film standout.
The performances of the adult cast in It: Chapter Two are very passive and the film feels more like a straight-to-DVD affair when they are taking up the screen time. There's no chemistry between the adult actors and the script isn't strong enough to overcome this problem; there are some entertaining lines here and there which help to distract the viewer from the lacking quality which the film offers, but they are few and far between. The child actors still do a reasonable job but again the script doesn't give them the same scope for excellence.
The third aspect of the film which falls short is the plot itself; of course some of the problems here aren't necessarily the director/filmmakers fault as it is a project which is derivative, but with this said the pacing of the film and the way that the film is structured is extremely dull. As a viewer you're begging for the climax to the film, you know what to expect - Pennywise is going to scare the children and adults in various situations and this will lead the adults to finding their given artefacts through which they will eventually attempt a ritual to fight their foe; there's no fear. The adults and children will be fine, they have to be or the film can't continue along the structure mentioned.
Finally, the scares which are present are spoiled by a trope in the horror genre which is almost always negative and frustrating - the overuse of effects and CGI. Scenes which are otherwise tense and interesting are spoiled by this problem and that is perhaps the biggest shame in terms of this particular film.
Overall the film is underwhelming and it would have benefited greatly from a more subtle and careful approach in its direction. Audiences need to see these problems in order for the genre to move forwards, as if they do not then directors will continue along this path due to the attractive margins which are there to be sought within the horror genre; films like It Follows and The Babadook are one offs in the field and one can only hope that films like It: Chapter Two are critically assessed to improve future films of this ilk.