It... should have been way better

Rating: 5/10 (19 September 2019)

Full disclosure, the original Stephen King novel It is something I talk about with great reverence. The 1000-something page book is a fantastic piece of horror fiction for a lot of reasons. So perhaps I'm being too harsh when I say that It: Chapter Two fails to meet the standard set by both the book and the first film in the duology, and frankly is not really worth your time.
Chapter Two picks up 27 years after the 2017 movie, and Pennywise has returned to continue his Derry-based buffet. Mike Hanlon (played by Old-Spice-commercial legend Isaiah Mustafa) never left the town since the original "Losers Club" thought they beat the monster. After he finds a blood soaked message, he calls his old friends one by one to bring them back to defeat the monster once and for all. After reuniting and remembering one another, they are sent off to find "tokens" from their past somewhere in town in order to complete the ritual of Chüd that will hopefully put Pennywise in the proverbial ground.
The above ensemble cast play the grown up versions of the kids from the last film, and do a fairly good job. When they're together and they aren't mostly screaming, the chemistry between them is great. Bill Skarsgård is still absolutely horrifying as Pennywise... when director Andrés Muschietti actually uses him in the film. There is one particular scene (partially featured in the trailer) where he lures a little girl below the bleachers of an ongoing little league game. She quickly realizes that he's not someone to be trusted, causing him to begin to cry and explain that no one likes him because of his scary makeup. The girl happens to have a large birthmark on her face, and she tells Pennywise she understands because people make fun of her face too! They laugh, and suddenly he promises to blow that mark right off her face... on the count of three! Oneeeeeee, twoooooooo, and then there's a 3 second beat of silence where Pennywise says nothing and only drools and stares..... before HE EATS HER FACE. The scene is a fantastic example of what the movie could have been. Its a travesty that he barely has any other opportunities in the movie to monologue like this, and is instead relegated to lines like "kiss me fat boy". It feels like the character could have reached the heights of a psychotic Hannibal Lecter. But alas, not in this adaptation.
Aside from a segment with a creepy old lady and another in a dimly lit hall of mirrors, nothing in the near three hour run time ever again comes close to this moment, and is mostly jump scares populated by CGI monsters. It's predictable yet exhausting for the viewer. Stories like It have the opportunity to affect terror and long-lasting fear through slow burn scares like the segment above. But the movie falls into a predictable and tiresome formula: character is alone, they hear a voice, they proceed to an isolated area, the music swells enough to make my ears hurt, cue jump scare, character runs away, end scene. The first movie is like this as well, so if you're here for more of the same you might be satisfied. However one difference that doesn't help the movie is that the tone is all over the place. It was clearly a horror movie, while Chapter Two has a multitude of one liners and awkward directing choices that cut through the tension and deflate many of the scenes. Is it a drama comedy? A fantasy epic? I'm still not sure.
There are also a few minor changes that I found to be distracting and unwarranted, one of which involves Richard Tozier (played by Bill Hader) who is suggested to be gay. This seems like a blatant attempt to make the movie "socially relevant", and while multiple scenes dropped hints, they added absolutely no value to the story. It makes even less sense when you note there was absolutely no mention or suggestion of this in the first movie. Another issue is that the numerous flashbacks of the Losers Club were riddled with de-aging CGI effects, which was super distracting and made the fear more difficult to appreciate on the faces of the kids. It was like they'd all gotten Botox injections right before they filmed their scenes.
So to summarize, the music is annoying, the scares are cheap, it's not even a horror movie, and worst of all, the star himself has no opportunity to shine. For a movie that should be about floating, it spends most of its time sinking.