Missed the mark

Rating: 5/10 (27 November 2019)

*Spoilers
I haven't read the book but I felt they got the Henry Bowers character all wrong. He worked in the first film because he was a villain grounded in reality, he represented everything wrong with the town of Derry.
Take the opening scene, contextually it felt misplaced. If the hate crime was instigated by Henry Bowers, and he was tied into the story through the arc of Richie, it might've worked. But as it is the scene seems ill fitting. The tone jumps from very bleak to camp almost instantly.
It worked when they were kids, not as adults.
What does work in Chapter Two is the scenes in which Pennywise is human. Like for instance the make up scene, or the old lady. Henry Bowers should've remained the cold and callous character he was before. The embodiment of IT's tyrannical hold.
These characters had a whole movie to set their arc, they fear more than zombies and spiders and those fears are based in reality. Which is exactly what the opening scene was trying to set up, It falls flat. If they ran with the same tone and actually gave it weight to the story, It might've been a better film, who knows.