Sorry Pennywise, Joker is the clown of the year

Rating: 5/10 (7 October 2019)

From one clown to another.
When I first started reading the book, I wasn't really captured by it. I put it away and didn't read it for some time. The next time I picked it up, I finished the whole 1200-page nightmare in little over a week. While not exactly following the events of the book, the first movie still managed to capture me and was a rather great horror film. Like the book, it relied on great storytelling and long-lasting scares. This one however, feels more like a interminable rollercoaster.
A great horror story is one that not only scares you while it is unfolding, but leaves you with permanent scars. It, the book, is one such example. Other films that does this are, Hereditary, The Shining, or Psycho. It's hard to see how It Chapter Two would fit into that category. It's an endless ride with predictable jump-scares and incomprehensible intercuts that leads to an unsatisfying climax. The "horror magic" from the first film is all lost through somewhat cheesy comedy and poorer script writing (perhaps suffering from the loss of one Cary Joji Fukunaga).
That said though, not all is bad. One thing they really nailed was how accurate the depiction of the adults were in regard to their younger counterparts. A few scenes, or parts of otherwise displeasing moments had me holding onto my chair. In particular the one where Pennywise lures away a little girl from her mother at a baseball game. Also while talking about the dancing clown, one cannot ignore the brilliant performance of Bill Skarsgård, who is scary good as the child-eating clown. Although this time around he had worse material to work with.
Nonetheless, probably the main reason why this film fails to scare, is because it's not gruesome enough. Which might sound weird, but in comparison to the book it is not even on the same level. The book is bizarre, grotesque, mind-boggling, weird, crazy, down right abnormal. If the movie feels like Stephen King was on pot while writing it, the book feels like he was on acid. Once in a blue moon I would say this: Skip the movie, read the book.