It: Chapter Two

Official Australian release date: 5/9/19. Viewed: 5/9/19.

Director: Andy Muschietti

Actors: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgard

Genre: Horror / Drama

Rating: MA

  

‘It: Chapter Two’ is the sequel to ‘It’ from only two years ago, but this is now the prophesized “27 years later”, with Pennywise (Skarsgard) back to wreak havoc on Derry. The seven teens from ‘It’ come home as adults to fulfill their oath of stopping Pennywise. This time, they’re: Bev (Chastain), Bill (McAvoy), Richie (Hader), Ben (Ryan), Mike (Mustafa), Eddie (Ransone) & Stanley (Bean). Don’t worry – there’s plenty of flashbacks so you can recall who’s who.

Thankfully, there’s some humour, thanks to Hader and Ransone, but the others seem to kind of coast through – no one’s bad in this, but no one stands out either. Unfortunately, for a film based around his psycho-killer-clown, Pennywise has very little screen time until the final 30min and you kind of forget what his motivation is. Being released so close to the first one, not sure we need so many prompts/reminders. That’s the main problem with the film – it’s almost an hour too long at 2 hours 50 minutes.

The second act where they have to each get a totem could’ve been done in a 10min montage, not a 45min drawn-out mini-mission for each character. There’s a few good CGI bits, some jumps, some gross moments, but nothing truly terrifying. Still, wouldn’t want to be watching this is I was under 12. Considering how tongue-in-cheek the film is with it’s references to Stephen King and crappy endings, I’m not sure if the ridiculous ending is supposed to be meta, or is just poor.

Overall: Better than the 1990 version, not quite as good as the 2017 one.

Gav's Rating: 3 stars.