Film Review - IT Chapter 2 (2019)

It: Chapter 2 is the second part of the IT adaptation and this time the Losers are now Adults (James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, James Ransone and Jay Ryan) who return to Derry, Maine when word of Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgard) comes back to haunt the town once again.

It 2 is okay overall, its not a bad movie in any sense of the word but its not a film that really to be honest justifies its existence but before I delve into those elements I want to talk about the good and there is some quite good stuff here.

Firstly the Horror element works much better than it did in the first film as its much less of the jump scare/quick cut/loud noise variety and more of the rollercoaster of darkness variety where all kinds of crazy stuff happens to scare the smeg out of the audience and I really liked a lot of those scenes as they justified the MA15 rating.

Secondly Mr Hader is really good here balancing the drama and the comedy really well and the film itself does have some good ideas in it regarding childhood trauma and how it can manifest itself in adulthood through conditions like Anxiety and Depression and Mental Illness.

But sadly this film has some major problems in it as I mentioned above briefly well here they are in more detail:

- First the use of Comedy in this movie really didn’t work too well for me and I am someone who can be very mixed on the use of Comedy in a movie as it feels like most of the time it’s the actors trying to get a laugh out of a packed crowd in a cinema and when that works it works very well but here it feels too overplayed as it comes after virtually every horror moment and as a result its attempt to give the film some levity fell flat, if this is going to be a Horror film make it one and don’t throw a Fucking Fuck bomb into every Fucking moment so people might laugh it didn’t Fucking work.

- Secondly there are far too many callbacks to IT Chapter 1 in this movie, almost every major part of the film does this flashback to the younger actors who were wonderful in that first film and really did a lot to lift up that film for me that it highlights how weak the older cast outside of Mr Hader are and they have some good moments but they just do not hold a candle to the kids from IT 1 and again if your going to make this from the point of view of the adults then Fucking Do IT! Okay don’t try to cut back and forth as like the comedy it doesn’t bloody work.

- And lastly the ending is very anticlimactic and when it was going on I just sat there thinking “Is that It, is this what we really built up to all this time?” and when I think on this ending I keep thinking that you could in all honesty put it onto the end of the first film and that would be totally fine as what it does it make this story of the Adults fighting Pennywise feel almost pointless and given its 169 minute running time it is not the feeling you want to have after that long in a cinema seat and you walk out of it.

And so that was IT Chapter 2 and its not a bad movie but its also one that really isn’t anything much either but fans will go and see it and I hope they like it more than I did, 2 and a half out of 5.