You'll Float Two

Rating: 6/10 (8 September 2019)

Stephen King films can be difficult to get right. There are some aspects of his writing which are quite hard to put to film, especially when it's a 1,200 page novel that contains a lot of lore that's impossible to condense it to even two movies. But he also has some of the greatest horror movie scenarios ranging from the goofiness of killer cars, the terror of being trapped with your most psychotic fan and of course a killer clown from space taking the form of everyone's worst nightmares.
Whilst chapter 1 of It wasn't able to include some of the more bizarre elements of the novel such as the ancient space turtle who created the universe, it instead focused on the battle for survival between a bunch of outcast kids known as the losers and an alien who wants nothing other than terrifying and eating them. Now chapter 2 takes place 27 years after the events of the first movie and the losers have all grown up and almost all have forgotten the horrors of their childhood. But when Pennywise reawakens, they are all called upon to make good of their promise to defeat the evil creature if It ever came back.
Though the film seems less interested in focusing on any plot and instead plays out more like a horror anthology film. Similar to the last film, the losers are separated through most of the films run time with Pennywise cornering them all by turning in to their own personal nightmares. This ranges from anything between being trapped in a hall of mirrors to encountering an old granny, at times delivering on a level of brutality that most films usually shy away from.
But in spite of the films increased budget, the scares aren't as effective this time around. There's nothing as visceral as the bloody bathroom or as frantic as Pennywise's monstrous form reaching out from a projector. Parly this is because of the absence of cinematographer Chung-hon Chung's who played a massive role in developing the nightmarish visuals of the first film. Also at 2 hours 45 minutes, there is a fair amount of repetition of the standard Pennywise formula. There's only so many times it's entertaining to see the same formula of one of the losers ending up alone, Pennywise jump scare and the loser running away unharmed before things start to get boring.
As for the characters themselves, all the new cast are all individually very entertaining. James McAvoy delivers with both emotional intensity. Jessica Chastain carries all of her characters trauma from the first film. And Bill Hader is an absolute treasure who's able to make anything hilarious. However as a group they don't share the same chemistry as their childhood counterparts, mostly because similar to the original TV miniseries the dynamic of young childhood friends is just more fun to watch.
And at the core of the movie once again is Bill Skarsgård's unhinged Pennywise. He's one of the few recent great movie monsters with an unsettling presence whenever he's onscreen, always moving in an unnatural twitchy way.
It's just a shame that Skarsgård is often only limited to being part of brief jumpscares and isn't given enough time, with the film favouring some more generic CGI monsters instead of just giving Skarsgård more time to deliver on some psychological terror. Overall watching It kind of feels like walking through a haunted house at a carnival. You'll get a few good jump scares and you'll have some good laughs, but not offering anything which is likely to resonate in any meaningful way.