I was expecting so much more from IT: Chapter Two. The 2017 version was really good and the cast of this sequel seemed to be a sign that we had another good one in store…. not so much.

Chapter Two failed in trying to be great at everything and in turn, ended up not even good at any. They tried to ride that wave of inserting snarky comedy into everything and it just didn’t work here. They tried to take a psychological suspense thriller and make it into a horror show/fright fest and fell short there too.

The movie tried so hard with jump-scares throughout. The problem was that they telegraphed them so much that they weren’t scary at all. You can’t marry suspense with jump-scares… well, at least you can’t do it 20 times in one film and expect them to have any effect. They did have the same effect – they were all boring.

The special effects too were lame – yeah, an amorphous gangly nude old lady was surprising to see but it didn’t feel scary – just hard to watch. The overdone tropes of a flood of blood or being buried alive were just boring.  Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise was the lone bright spot in the film. He was perfect in the role. The problem was all the boring that surrounded him.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame Bill Hader, James Ransone, Jay Ryan, Isaiah Mustafa, Jessica Chastain, and Andy Bean did fine… they just weren’t given much of a script to work with. James McAvoy stood out as the only one of the “Losers” that really rose above the poor material.

by Chris Doelle

Rating 2 of 10