The Most Anticipated Sequel of the Year: IT Chapter Two Review

Sequels always get a bad reputation, whether the story wasn’t good enough or the characters weren’t developed enough. There is even more scrutiny when the movie is an adaptation of a novel, especially critiqued by the author. IT: Chapter Two, the sequel to the IT (2017) is the adaptation of the second half of the novel of the same name by Stephen King. The film takes place twenty-seven years after the initial defeat of Pennywise, the shape-shifting eater of worlds that feeds on children. The only member of the Losers Club left living in Darry, Mike, calls up the rest of his old friends once the killings start happening again. Most of them end up going, not realizing what they were going into, but Stanley has had enough of the trauma from Pennywise and the call from Mike drove him to suicide. When the remaining members arrive, they go out to eat, but at the end of the meal, the fortune cookies spell out an eerie message, and that’s it all goes down from there. Realizing what Mike called them there for, they attempt to leave before changing their minds once an old bully shows up and attacks them. Mike tells them that there’s a ritual for getting rid of Pennywise for good, and they set out to find different memories from their childhoods to use before finally confronting Pennywise and ultimately defeating him. This is a horror movie, so there are quite a few jump scares and CGI interpretations of the different forms IT takes. I’ve seen many complaints on the length of the film (almost three hours) and the ending, however I would consider this movie better than the previous one. There are a lot of f-bombs and jump scares, so don’t watch it if you are squeamish around that. The character development is strong; the adult actors did a great job of making the audience think that they were actually the older counterparts of the younger characters. Some of the best parts of the movie (in my humble opinion) were when they visited their childhood homes and favorite places. There are quite a few flashbacks that neatly fix anything confusing. While I certainly enjoyed the movie, it kept me wondering if in the future, people will be confused as to why we had an obsession with scary clown movies. Or will they too understand the almost universal fear of clowns? All in all, I would give this film a solid 8/10. IT: Chapter Two is an entertaining, funny, and troubling follow-up to the successful 2017 IT.