Long, Drawn out and Underwhelming

Rating: 5/10 (16 September 2019)

It was always going to be difficult to successfully follow up the 2017 film, but this sequel falls well short of the original. With a massive 2hr 50min runtime this film is 45 minuets longer than the original and it feels every bit longer, this is due to the poor pacing of the film as it insists on visiting each characters fear once again for what feels like 20 minutes each, which gets very repetitive, very quickly, it's because of this pacing I found myself disconnected and often checking my watch. Without trying to spoil anything, the story is incredibly familiar to the first film and gave the feeling of watching a poorly re-hashed version of the 2017 film, but just with adults instead of children. I also failed to find this film particularly scary, its starts out well with some good jump scares, but the movies scares quickly become predictable and lose their effect, and the role of It or Pennywise felt much larger than in the other film and this greater screen time of the titular character led to his presence on screen lose meaning and fail to invoke the same sort of fear.
However, it's not all negative with this film, the casting of this film is outstanding with the adult's likeness to some of the children being almost scary, with Eddie played by James Ransome being the almost the spitting image of his younger counterpart. The acting is also great in this film with all the main cast performing very well, Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise the clown is outstanding again, unfortunately the good acting cannot make up for the poor writing and poor pacing, leading this film to fall very flat.
5/10