IT Chapter Two Movie Review: An OK Sequel To A Good Movie, That Is Plagued By Its Run Time And Saved By The Performances

• Hollywood News
• Updated:September 05, 2019 01:11 IST

• Authors: Achu Krishnan (Editorial Team)
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IT Chapter Two, the sequel to the critically and commercially successful IT, and to be honest this movie is a mixed bag. That is not to say that Chapter 2 is a bad movie but you will enjoy more if you watched the first part.

Like a lot of sequels, IT Chapter 2 suffers from 'bigger is always better' curse and that is the biggest flaw of the movie. For some reason the people behind the movie choose to do this, and because of this, the movie suffers from an uneven pace and a terribly long runtime. For instance, as the film opens, re-introduction to 'The Losers' and their ultimate reunion in Derry eats up nearly 30 minutes of the run-time leaving you craving for the horror that you originally paid for.

What worked so well for Chapter One was the fact it followed its source material faithfully. Nowhere did it feel that it was trying to one-up the original storyline but rather be faithful and smooth out some of the rough edges.

So it would be better to watch the original before watching the sequel, that being said what works for the movie and carries it are the incredible performances from the lead actors including James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Jay Ryan, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, James Ransone, Chosen Jacobs. Their believable and strong performances make up for the pacing issues, Bill Skarsgård who plays the big bad clown is amazing in his role and knocks it out of the park every time he is on screen.

If you are new to the franchise and go in expecting a full-on horror movie experience then this movie is not for you because this is not a horror movie but rather a movie about overcoming IT (pun intended), this is, for the most part, where the movie is true to the source material.

The humor in this movie really lands well but be warned this is just a tool to disarm you and keep you at ease because this movie has a lot of creepy and disturbing imagery.

However, the movie could have been paced a lot better. Normally in a movie like this the downtime i.e when the protagonists sit down to come up with a plan, always feels too long and boring that is not the case here, in fact, a lot of the best moments in the movie are when these characters interact with each other.

The glaring issue with the movie is that certain characters and story arcs are just there for the sake of being there and are not explored or concluded which just adds to the runtime this movie needed to be cut down. There is at least 30 minutes of footage in this movie that just needed to be cut and trust me it in no way would have affected the plot

So, IT Chapter Two is not as good as the original but like I said before that does not make it a bad horror movie just one that should have stuck to its roots and tried to tell an endearing story and not just pointless fluff.