A panoramic psycho funhouse fantasy horror

Rating: 8/10 (12 September 2019)

A sleepy backwater town in New England is once more about to be violently disrupted and manically stalked by the sinister and psychotic Pennywise, the dancing clown. The film picks up twenty-seven years later. A series of events rouse the fears and calls to action the one friend who chose to remain, waiting for the inevitable return of IT.
Six phone calls later, and we are given a glimpse into the lives of the six friends that turned their backs and moved away from the town with its dark history.
It's a slick and quick profile of the friends who are reminded of a promise, a promise to return to that town of childhood memories, memories that have been buried deep in the psyche. They are once again reunited, all except for one.
The casting is excellent and reflects the young actors so accurately from the first installment, including another mesmerizing performance from Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise.
The dynamic is quickly restored and so too the memories begin to awaken and with that, the audience is drawn into the first fantasy horror sequence that will be used in more intense scenes later.
Overall, the film works and reflects an authentic attempt to give cinematic life to an ambitious novel from a (if not 'the') master of the horror genre, who treats his fans to a brief cameo role.
This is much more than a clown and demonic desire to kill and feed on the flesh, firstly the clown is just one manifestation as will become apparent throughout the film. The essence of this story is overcoming the deepest, darkest fears we experience as children and then to return as adults, six, forty-year-old childhood friends to once again face those fears, those disturbing memories and the dysfunctional parental/family issues that haunted them and have tried to suppress over all those years.
Pennywise, represents the imposing fear, larger than life, in a way we amplify our problems and fears to appear more sinister than what they really are.
The film unfurls with charming moments of nostalgia that resonates in all of us, particularly if you are of a similar age to the friends reunited. I would go as far as saying that is the beauty within this slick horror flick.
Inevitably, the film culminates in the grand confrontation and a panoramic psycho funhouse portrayal leads the six friends to challenge the various manifestations of Pennywise. There was an element of looping ideas from the first installment, which felt a little lazy, maybe a deliberate attempt connecting the two films, whilst all the gory, twisted, CGI horror scenes flash across the screen.
The ending to this orgy of horror in some ways imitates the 'lead' character Bill Denbrough, a local and internationally renowned author who is further renowned for the bad endings of his books and maybe that is an ironic inside joke between the director, the screenwriter and original author. But I felt the ending did not satisfy my compulsion and invested intrigue over the two installments. That being said it is a richly entertaining and fascinating portrayal that does justice to the majestic novel published in the mid-eighties.