Title: It Chapter 2
Rating: R
Director: Andy Muschietti
Starring: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader
Runtime: 2 hrs 49 mins

What It Is: There’s a murder in Derry 27-years later: It has returned. Aware of this, the last of The Losers to stay in Derry puts a call out for their own homecoming in order to yet again defeat Pennywise for the last time. Reunited, they must acquire artifacts by making their way back through the cursed town, trudging through and recovering their traumatic memories in a struggle to survive the powerful entity that exploits and feeds on their fear.

What We Think: I liked the first film. It’s marked as one of the most entertaining summer flicks I’ve seen in the past half-decade, so, don’t condemn me when I say I was really internally cautious when it came to the announcement that Chapter 2 would soon be in theaters. Many a time has a movie lifted me up and its sequel grand slam me back into critical cynicism. Thankfully, this isn’t the case. I don’t expect the It series to necessarily be life-changing or thought-provoking, or should you necessarily be either. It was a fun f*cking time in the theater—I was eating it up. It’s not flawless, but not flawless in ways that I didn’t mind. The near 3-hour duration whipped by. It was, in a lot of ways, like going to a carnival or a haunted house. Here’s the setup, now the next setup, now the next—different scenes of different scares to chew on one after another. The pacing very much resembles video game, defeating boss after boss, which I can see how that would irk someone, but personally, I didn’t mind. I thought I would be more critical but I wasn’t. It’s certainly dark romp about overcoming trauma and child abuse manifested in living nightmares and I had so much fun. Really, you can take it as lighthearted or as seriously as you want to. I loved the creature designs, the makeup effects, and the art design overall. The cinematography was really good, the story (for what it is) serves. The acting was well done and as usual, Mr. Skarsgard Pennywise outdoes himself.

Our Grade: B+, While definitely repetitive in itself and of its predecessor, I had just as much if not more fun watching this. Not the best, not great, but pretty good, and in this case, that works for me. It was entertaining and a good time. A funny, goofy film with the too good production value to be campy, this delivers as a newer type of mainstream horror that unleashes more creative gore and horrors to delight.