Our first sequel of September is It: Chapter 2. (Why is it called chapter 2 when this is the final movie?)

You loved It: Chapter 1 because it had great characters, a great message about facing your fears and most importantly it was can’t turn away scary!!! Well, you’re in for a treat with this one as the characters you love will be stupider, the message will be don’t beat up gays and don’t go down corridors in the dark, but most importantly the scares are much BIGGER! You will be so scared that you will either roll your eyes or laugh yourself silly.

27 years have passed since 1989 and I know this might sound like a nitpick, but they could have done a better job at defining that this is now 2016. They did such a great job last time at establishing the 80’s setting that 2016 feels just like any other day. The Losers are all grown-up now, they have taxes to pay and unwanted hair to pull out. All of that will have to be put on hold as Pennywise has returned to Derry to leave a trail of corpses so our heroes will want to come back and finish It once and for all.

I think I’m going to keep this brief as this movie is a pretty mediocre follow-up to the previous movie. What did I like? I liked that they brought the kids back for the flashbacks, it made me wish this movie came out 27 years later so I could see the original actors play their older selves. Luckily the grown-up versions were pretty damn good as well. Isaiah Mustafa as Mike Hanlon and Bill Hader as Richie Tozier were my favourites. Bill Skarsgard was once again terrific at playing It but the character is a different story, and we will get to that. The core ideas from the book were very well handled and it was very well shot.

That’s about it so let’s get to the fun part.

Those bloody jump scares have to ruin everything! The first movie had this problem too, but it’s cranked up to the max now as every tense scene has to have this loud music accompanying it. This movie is also way longer for no apparent reason but to add in more scary scenes that aren’t scary and are more comical. This little girl is at the baseball game with her mum and her unobservant mother lets her follow a firefly under the stands and guess who’s waiting for her! It’s redundant too as we already know Pennywise has returned with the opening of the rednecks tossing the gay guy into the river. Also the execution of these scenes was so bad that it was funny.

There was other unintentional comedy mainly when they try and fail to be self aware of their current situation. Though to be fair there is intentional comedy as well which is mainly from the Losers banter and Richie, which was pretty good. This may be a spoiler for those who aren’t familiar with It, but I hate how they treat Henry Bowers in these adaptations. Seriously this guy is constantly shunted to the sidelines and when he shows up he looks like an idiot!

I may be wrong about this, but I felt like a lot more studio pressure was in effect to give Pennywise more screen time and have more long drawn out scenes of him trolling The Losers. Oh I forgot, since this is a sequel the scares have got to be BIG!!!!! Bill can’t be sorry for his brother’s death he also needs to save some random kid from It. Eddie is on a timer to save his mum from a leper in some creepy basement in the local pharmacy. Richie can’t be taunted by just It, but the whole park needs to be watching him! Lastly the fortune cookies are trying to kill the Losers so Mike grabs a chair and smashes those suckers like he’s just realised McDonalds have ran out of szechuan sauce! Midway through the movie this tactic got old very quickly and it made me think of the first movie and how they nicely paced out the It encounters.

Wow Cam that was not brief. It: Chapter 2 is on the border of okay and mediocre for me. If the horror was completely removed it would be a pretty good movie with great acting and a not too bad story with a great message behind it. The worst part of It is I actually prefer the 90’s mini-series over this. This is a 5½ out of 10. It’s a shame, but I have recovered from worse. I’m going to close up shop for today so I have been The Blog Complainer, signing out.