Review: It: Chapter Two

I was happy to see the 'It' do well financially as it a mainstream horror that was not about jump scares. The story was interesting, I liked the characters and the scares were more about disturbing imagery then a loud noise, which is easily more effective.

Having the 90's TV mini-series version, I am aware that chapter two doesn't match the quality of chapter one. But I remained confident going into this, that they could do something interesting with this final installment and give us something that was worth making.

It ended up being a hard one to fully get on board with. The introduction and build-up to our characters reuniting was nice. There were some well executed horror sequences in the chapter's most iconic scene, which I was happy to see.
Then after that, it was a series of solid individual scenes that never felt part of one story. Then once we got to the finale, I felt a bit exhausted. That wasn't helped with the unnecessary duration of 2hrs 49mins. It had no right to be that length and that ended up being the films biggest negative.

Another drawback was I wasn't that into the forced bits of comedy being the end-note of almost every moment of horror. It either felt forced to lighten the mood or to make the most of the actor delivering those lines as he is seen more as a comedic actor.

I honestly didn't think the performances were that great except for Bill Skarsgard, who continues to show his impressive transformation into his iconic character. I didn't feel the major casting chocies of Jessica Chastain and/or James McAvoy elevated the level of acting. The use of the kid actors from chapter one were much more endearing then the adults.
There was nothing bad about the acting. There was very little to shout about. It ended up being rather ordrinary.

While there were a good amount of noticeable drawbacks to grind my enjoyment down, there was also enough creativity in the horror sequences that made me enjoy enough of it to make this a good enough feature.
If they were a bit more active in the editing in certain aspects, this could have been 2hr film with much more fluid pacing and less moments of drag.
But with the original and past portrayals never matching the content of the first chapter, I guess I'll settle with what we got.

Rating: 7/10