Much longer than Chapter One but half the enjoyment

Rating: 2/10 (6 September 2019)

After seeing Chapter One I expected so much more, unfortunately IT didn't deliver. The film starts out with an overly graphic bashing scene that tries hard to be topical but instead seems to be there just to dare you to criticize it's honesty. And things just go downhill from there. The Loser's Club of the first film reunites 27 years later to have another go at defeating Pennywise, but where the kids were charming and you wanted to root for them, the adults all go separate ways to have their own jump scene moments through an overly long two hour middle section of the film. The film bogs because it keeps showing flashbacks to when they were kids instead of building the characters as adults. The effect is that you never really care about them as adults, they're just an excuse to show CGI monsters that never really scare you on any level. The pacing of the film is so roughshod that it never lets any suspense build as it jumps from one scene to the next, while you keep checking your watch wondering how much more of this you'll have to endure. The middle becomes a bit of a horror film mish mash with an homage to John Carpenter's The Thing (verbatim quote and all) a little bit of Toy Story erector spider, a dash of Poltergeist's Native American mumbo jumbo added in with a couple of million years old space entity tossed in in case you needed something to understand what they're up against. James McAvoy's character is jokingly referred to as an author whose book endings suck (a nod to the book) and unfortunately this film doesn't improve on the novel. It's just an overly long series of vignettes that tie to Chapter One in an unsatisfying way.