It Chapter 2 (2019)

When 'It' came out two years ago it was really greeted as something kind of special. First off the timing was great, 80's nostalgia was starting to pick up do in part to the success of Stranger Things, with which this movie shared a cast member (Finn Wolfhard), and also there was that thing with the creepy clowns showing up on the sides of roads at night, remember that? It was an adaptation of a significant horror novel, which already had a lot cultural cache thanks in part to Tim Curry's portal of the titular clown in a 1990 mini series. This 'It' was approaching the material in a different way by presenting events chronologically rather then the flash back heavy structure of the original novel and the TV version. 'It' was a big summer movie release starting a cast of largely unknown kids and with the relatively modest budget of $35 million dollars. It made over $700 million at the box office, it was a huge hit both finically and critically, it's sequel however is considerably more average in every way. Well every way other then making money, its already made $220 million and it came out last week.

'It Chapter 2' starts out promising enough, I especially liked how they showed many of the characters repeating the same life patterns they had started as children into adult hood, with Eddie marrying a domineering woman much like his mother, and Beverly in a manipulative relationship like the one she had with her father, and so on. The gang reunites 27 years after the events in the first film to fulfill the pledge they made to fight It should it return, the movie lost a good deal of its intensity for me shortly after the dinner sequence. The characters have to divide up to find 'talismans' from their childhoods which mostly serve as an excuse to bring the kids back again for flash back sequences, people really liked those kids they were great, so now we have a collection of 'forgotten memories' that play like deleted scenes from the previous movie. There are more jump scares and effect shots in this movie, the monsters look like CGI rendering of illustrations from those 'Scary Story' books of  my childhood, which we don't need because those just got their own movie and here they are more vaguely unsettling in an 'uncanny valley' sort of way then really scary.

I will readily compliment the film on its casting, all the adults, but especially some of the lesser known actors, really look believable as adult versions of the characters from the first movie. The performances here are good, but the whole films lacks the tension and unifying sense of unease that marked the first film. Some things in this movie just seem kind of off, especially the town of Derry, which had such as strong sense of character in the first movie, here it's seems kind of empty, both in emotional context and in the sense of where are all the people? Their doesn't seem to be any staff in that hotel, which I thought was going to be because of some 'It' mind trick, but no the empty hotel doesn't tie into anything.

As you've gathered I was disappointed in 'It Chapter 2', though not a horrible movie it felt depressingly average. It also hurts some when a major recurring gag is that Bill, who grew up to be writer, doesn't do endings well. Foreshadowing indeed. **1/2