Was this intended a comedy?

Rating: 1/10 (8 September 2019)

Look, I don't mind being entertained at the movies, but there does come the expectation with such an adaptation of one of the best and most beloved horror novels ever written that it accord some respect while remaining true to the source material.
My main problem with this film lies in its tonal inconsistency. I could never tell if it was attempting to set a somber, foreboding, menacing feeling, or if it was trying to create an atmosphere conducive towards a lighthearted, hilarious jump-scare filled marathon. In one moment it hangs heavy in emotional gravitas (the opening scene is especially brutal and difficult to watch, and Stanley's suicide is also fairly dark), and the next, it's so ludicrously over the top and in your face in its execution of its "horror" elements that it produces a jarring sense of tonal discord. What exactly is this film attempting to be? The horror was so absurdly explicitly comedic in its execution (not helped by questionable effects work) that I must assume that was the intent. Yet in taking such a directorial approach, it effectively nullified the entire foundation that the movie required to establish and help foment the dreadful tension, atmosphere, and tone necessitated by the narrative (and of which made the book so stellar), and further relegated all the work by the actors and all other aspects of the film that had helped establish it up to that point void. If it wasn't intentional, then it does nothing so well as to exemplify how the filmmakers hold a fundamental misunderstanding of what actual horror really entails.
"IT Chapter Two" spends much of its runtime plodding through a mindless, rote, predictable checklist of the characters recovering their artifacts from their youths, to the same tired, mindless, rote, predictable jump scares thrown at you one after the other which you can see coming from a million miles off which further robbed them of all their potency. How am I supposed to care at all about the protagonists' emotional plights (which are portrayed in a serious light) when their antagonist and its supposedly evil forms who are responsible for them are utterly stripped of their malevolence and are portrayed in such a formulaic, repetitive, explicit, and laughably juvenile manner? Yes, I know "IT" manifests itself also as a Pennywise who does utilize a childlike humor to lure his prey in, but that doesn't mean it wasn't the only way nor that the entity wasn't terrifying in all the revelations of its truest forms. They were terrifying in the novel, and here they're a downright riot. A little subtlety, suggestion, imagination, minimalism and unpredictability goes a long way and would've done this film wonders, as that's where the real core of any effective horror resides. It would've not only have helped maintain tonal consistency, it would've made it genuinely unsettling. My theatre was howling at every turn, and I'm completely left at a loss as to whether that was what the director intended.
As is, this film suffers an identity crisis. It is inconsistent, predictable, ludicrously (and unintentionally?) hilarious, redundant, overly drawn out to the point of boredom, and worst of all, a downright insult to King, who I'm shocked made the cameo he did in tacit approval of this screen adaptation abomination of his finest work. The glaring tonal juxtaposition and abysmal execution robbed me of all interest in witnessing The Losers' Club finally confront this ultimate evil terrorizing a small Maine town every 27 years, because in the end, it wasn't an ultimate evil at all......it was a goddamn mockery of one.
And due to that, I walked out. Truly, truly awful.