IT Chapter Two Review

IT Chapter Two is the second film in the IT horror franchise.  It is about a clown named Pennywise that terrorises the town of Derry. The film comes directed by Andy Muschietti who some may know as the director of Mama (2013). The film stars Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Isiah Mustafa, Bill Skarsgard and Andy Bean.

When I first heard of this film, I was quite excited about it. I had enjoyed the first film back in 2017 and thought it was actually pretty scary. In this second film, time has been fast forwarded and our young characters are now adults. Something happens in the town of Derry and they all go back to fight the IT monster one more time. To me this idea seemed interesting and IT Chapter 2 had picked up Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy as cast members, while retaining the same director, so things looked promising.

When I did come out of watching this film after sitting there for a massive 2 hours and 49 minutes, I left feeling like the first film was a little better than this one. I’m not sure why it is, but I felt that original of kids was more enjoyable to watch and things were much scarier in the first film than in this second one. As adults, facing the same threat that they overcame when they were children as adults, I felt that the fear was not as strong in the adult characters. Although the fear of Pennywise was certainly still there, the film’s tone tends to make light of much of the incidents and there’s characters in there making all sorts of jokes. As for the monsters and the scares, while I thought the first film was quite chilling to sit through, this one was more spooky and gruesome than scary. IT Chapter Two is like watching and adult version of The Goosebumps.

The other issue I had with this film was with the music that’s played constantly over much of the scenes. While it was okay in some areas, the score to me just didn’t seem very unique and often I felt it was out of place. The music at times seemed to be overpowering certain scenes and didn’t seem to do much at all for many of the more tense moments in the film. The music also seemed like it was just standard theatrical music and just got put in there. I really didn’t like any of the musical elements in this film.

The actors are all good and Jessica Chastain is probably the best of the group. I felt that James Mcavoy was a little bit wasted in this though and I didn’t really see much at all from this actor. The rest of the group are all okay, but their characters were all a bit silly and I never could take any of them too seriously.

The film’s message is probably its strongest plus, with strong anti-bullying and anti-abuse themes throughout it. Coming out of the film, it’s all about overcoming the more negative aspects of human life and how people always remember the worst things. IT Chapter Two also filled with flashbacks to a few of the characters childhoods and all those meanings that come with growing up, as most of them are all in full time jobs now. There’s much made about the these points and combination of these themes comes through strong in the end.

The special effects are good. There’s a variety of monsters in this film and quite a few very gruesome and spooky looking ones. There’s definitely a lot in there to scare you and I must admit a few of the jump scares did get me. The special effects and the scares are the most fun aspect of the IT Chapter Two experience, In this area, I didn’t feel at all that I was disappointed with anything there.

The movie in the end is okay, I don’t mind it, but I also don’t love it and there’s a lot that I don’t like. I think with the first film with the kids, things were kept quite small and it was scary enough. But this second time with the adults, things are much bigger and there’s larger monsters and everything. But I think they went too big with this and it ended up getting silly in some parts. In the end I felt it was more spooky and gruesome rather than scary and chilling. The actors are all okay and special effects are good enough. I’d say go see this anyway if you love the first film and also if you want a horror movie experience. But if you skipped this film at the cinema and waited to watch it on Netflix or rented it when it came out, it wouldn’t be too bad either.