Nolan James
Reporter
It Chapter Two is a rough draft; the base ideas for a good movie are there, but it is not a good movie itself. Stephen King’s It is a massive book, so it makes sense for It Chapter Two to have such a massive runtime.
In the first act, it is revealed the villain from the first film, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, is still alive, and all the characters from the first film are called back to their hometown of Derry, Maine. Seeing the “Losers Club,” as they are referred to, all grown-up provides a pleasant exercise in nostalgia.
However, after all the characters meet up and come across Pennywise one-by-one, the film begins to fall apart. Bill Skarsgård once again does an excellent and effectively creepy job portraying the killer clown; it is quite a shame director Andy Mushcietti opted to use hokey CGI monsters instead most of the time.
The child actors were still far more interesting than the adults; they simply had better chemistry. The best scenes in this movie are the flashbacks to them as kids, which serves as a reminder that the first film is far more interesting.
It, the novel, is thematically rich, but this movie chooses to ignore much of that. Derry, Maine in the novel is a town seeping with evil; it is corrupted by the evil clown whose grasp encompasses the whole of the town and its people. Derry, Maine in the movie is a town of people who are jerks for no discernable reason.
In contrast, the cinematography, at least during the first third, contains some truly amazing shots and atmospheric locations.
However, cinematographer Checco Varese must have given up by the end of the film, as he resorted to the ever-annoying shaky cam and strobe lights for most of the last act. Like in the first film, It Chapter Two finds itself far too reliant on repetitive jump scares, this time for an extra half-hour.
The movie is long, but it could have been longer, or at least more focused. It Chapter Two is the outline to what could have been a good movie, and a disappointing conclusion to what could have been a great adaptation.
