IT Chapter Two (2019)
Despite not normally being the biggest fan of horror I remember back in 2017 going to see It and being pleasantly surprised by what I saw. There was a ton of heart to the film and I thought all aspects of it really worked which the general audience seemed to agree with as the film blowing up and becoming fully mainstream. Even though I found the trailers for It Chapter Two to be pretty disappointing and stale I still had hope for this movie going back to my enjoyment of the first film. This started to change though when I rewatched the first movie and found myself struggling to get through it. The charm that was there for me in 2017 was hard to find and immediately my hope in the sequel dropped. Still, I went to the theater and sat through this nearly 3-hour film and from the very first scene I felt a disconnect between myself and the movie. This is a movie full of questionable decisions that leads to an overall weak and messy film.
The biggest miss of the movie, in my opinion, would be the actual plot that this movie decides to take. Specifically, in the middle portion of this film after the Loser's Club has returned to Derry and have split up to try and find their tokens from the past needed to defeat Pennywise I found this film to fully fall apart into a bland random assortment of clips. The film has such a rough structure as it jumps around these various stories as seemingly meaningless scenes play for what seems to be just to add some more jumpscares. It also was weird to me how much this movie decides to focus on these characters past as children, sure that was one major highlight most audiences had with the last movie but in this sequel taking place when they are adults I really got bored keep jumping back to the past. It didn't add anything to the movie or these characters and kept feeling like weak random scenes that overall meant nothing. Then you add in random side plots that go absolutely nowhere like Henry Bowers coming back to kill the Losers Club and the film just feels like a complete mess.
As I mentioned the only reason I can see them adding these scenes is to try and make the film seem scarier as the majority of jumpscares and scenes with Pennywise happen in these flashbacks but my god are these jumpscares bad. Sure the CGI is much better than it was in the first film but I found multiple of these scares to be laughably bad. It also doesn't help that most of these scenes play out with the exact same layout and type of jumpscare. This aspect of the film was just pure cringy and kept taking me out of the already messy plot. I also will say that I found this movie to be quite exploitive and borderline offensive in some scenes. So much has been said about the opening scene which features a hate crime against a gay couple which did sit wrong with me as a gay man but past even past that, how this movie uses abuse, violence, suicide, and the struggles of being LGBT really sat wrong with me. It seems like cheap attempts to create a more powerful scene yet they never actually do anything with these themes and never feel like it justifies its exploitation of them.
As I mentioned the only reason I can see them adding these scenes is to try and make the film seem scarier as the majority of jumpscares and scenes with Pennywise happen in these flashbacks but my god are these jumpscares bad. Sure the CGI is much better than it was in the first film but I found multiple of these scares to be laughably bad. It also doesn't help that most of these scenes play out with the exact same layout and type of jumpscare. This aspect of the film was just pure cringy and kept taking me out of the already messy plot. I also will say that I found this movie to be quite exploitive and borderline offensive in some scenes. So much has been said about the opening scene which features a hate crime against a gay couple which did sit wrong with me as a gay man but past even past that, how this movie uses abuse, violence, suicide, and the struggles of being LGBT really sat wrong with me. It seems like cheap attempts to create a more powerful scene yet they never actually do anything with these themes and never feel like it justifies its exploitation of them.
If there was one saving grace to the film it would be the acting which overall is quite strong. So much has been said about Bill Hader and I agree that he is an obvious standout bringing his insane quality as a comedic actor to play but past him, I thought Jessica Chastain gave a really great performance as she struggles with the trauma she has gone through. James McAvoy also is really strong giving probably the most emotionally powerful performance of the film. The only member of the Loser's Club that I couldn't really get behind was James Ransone as Eddie. His performance constantly seemed off and he really struggled to find the comedic tone of the character he was playing. Bill Skarsgård returns as Pennywise and once again I do think he is really good in that role. He has such a unique energy to him where he can switch flawlessly between being a fun clown drawing children in and a crazy scary serial killer. Unfortunately though due to the bulk of his scenes taking place in these horribly put together flashbacks I thought his performance ended up feeling weaker and more forgettable than it actually was.
I know plenty have fallen in love with It Chapter Two but for me, this was bland at best. It is such a messy and badly built movie that has not only a questionable plot but a questionable plot that is horribly handled. Sure the actors try in the movie and there are some really impressive effects but overall this one fell down and got lost in the sewer for me.
I know plenty have fallen in love with It Chapter Two but for me, this was bland at best. It is such a messy and badly built movie that has not only a questionable plot but a questionable plot that is horribly handled. Sure the actors try in the movie and there are some really impressive effects but overall this one fell down and got lost in the sewer for me.