Substandard follow-up that doesn't have a lot to like

Rating: 4/10 (20 January 2020)

Returning to their home-town, the now-adult group of friends finds they've been gathered to fulfill the childhood promise that the killer clown Pennywise has returned and is on the loose in the town, forcing them to put aside their past traumas to defeat the malevolent being once and for all.
This was a woefully underwhelming and overblown effort. Among its many flaws is the most obvious issue in that there's just no reason for the running time to last this long at all. So much of this one could've been cut down or outright removed, from the introduction of the gang one-by-one to see where their lives are like now that goes into plenty of detail that could've been accomplished easier, to the incidents in the asylum tormenting the residents inside or just the seemingly endless scenes depicting the escaped inmate under the clown's influence. That these are done in conjunction with utterly boring flashbacks and storytelling that shows how they used to be as kids that just go on forever, serve no purpose to the storyline at all and just seem to focus on seemingly random incidents that just plain dull to get through. It highlights the fact that the main clown does absolutely nothing here with so little screen-time as we're focusing on the kids' flashbacks interacting with the clown or building the romance angle instead of in modern times. The other factor to lower this one are the entirely overblown scare attempts that fall completely flat. The CGI here manages to undo so much of the attempts that the scenes of the food coming to life in the Chinese restaurant is laughably inept with the black pool looking like a deformed blob-like mess that's incredibly cheesy looking and makes no sense in the storyline how that works, much less comes off like any other expected outcome from the very start. Likewise, flashbacks to show the kids interacting with Pennywise, featuring the confrontation in the apartment, the statue coming to life in the park or the appearance from the sewer grate are all laughably bad and underwhelming with how crude they are. It's pretty disheartening to see so much wasted time in a film this long feature so little chances for something to happen and then showcase such underwhelming and laughably bad work when they do appear, really undermining this one and making for a troublesome effort. There are only a few select aspects that work here. Despite generally being underwhelming, the encounter with the kid in the hall-of-mirrors at the carnival stands out as a wholly enjoyable and solid enough effort that works off the darkness of the setting, the overall creepiness of the concept in general and stellar practical effects that are usually missing from these other scenes. As well, the spirit of unity and brotherhood that they display in the finale when they band together to take on the true form of the creature in the underground sewer lair of Pennywise which is not only a great idea to see play out but has some energetic albeit comically over-the-top action that at least puts some life into things. Combined with the creepiness of the main clown and the ability to kill off kids with graphic results, these are all that work for this one.
Rated R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, underage smoking and continuous violence against children.