{"id":44592,"date":"2019-09-09T10:44:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T14:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=44592"},"modified":"2019-09-09T10:45:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T14:45:41","slug":"it-chapter-two-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/09\/it-chapter-two-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"It: Chapter Two \u2013 Movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Back\nin 2017, the big-screen version of Stephen King\u2019s \u201cIt\u201d became the biggest\nhorror movie of all time with a domestic gross of over $327 million. The film\nprobably would have gotten a sequel based on its box office alone, but it\nhelped that King\u2019s book takes places in two different time periods, making a\nfollow-up practically a necessity. So now we have \u201cIt: Chapter Two,\u201d a film\nthat has some big floppy clown shoes to fill. The horror movie certainly isn\u2019t\nafraid to deliver in quantity, with a 170-minute runtime. I think the logic is\nthat you can afford to spend more time with the film because it\u2019s so scary that\nyou won\u2019t be able to sleep after it\u2019s over. I barely made it through the film\nwithout falling asleep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            It\nhas been 27 years since the events of the first movie, and The Losers\u2019 Club of\nDerry, Maine is reuniting to stop the evil It from going on another killing\nspree. Bill (James McAvoy) has grown up to be a horror writer not unlike\nStephen King. Beverly (Jessica Chastain) fled from her abusive creep of a\nfather just to marry an abusive creep of a husband. Eddie (James Ransome) is\nstill a hypochondriac, but a professional one as a risk analyst. Foul-mouthed\nRichie (Bill Hader) is a wildly successful hack standup comedian. Ben (Jay\nRyan) got in shape and is now unrecognizable as a hunky architect who still\npines for Beverly. Stan (Andy Bean) doesn\u2019t make it back to Derry. And Mike\n(Isaiah Mustafa) has stayed in Derry this whole time studying the entity and\nlearning about a ritual that can kill it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Mike\nis confident that The Losers\u2019 Club can perform the ritual and defeat It, but\nfirst they need to go on individual adventures around town retrieving artifacts\nfrom their troubled pasts. About here is where the film becomes noticeably\nrepetitive and overlong. Every member has to have their own subplot where\nthey\u2019re haunted, both by their own past and It in the present. The trailers\nhave made a big deal out of Beverly\u2019s portion, where she visits her old\napartment and finds a subtly unnerving old woman living there. The scene itself\nis fine, but every other member goes through something similar, to diminishing\nreturns. These scenes and scares get so formulaic that I found myself\nsilently-yet-actually counting off on my fingers \u201cbeat-beat-JUMPSCARE!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It, by the way, usually\nmanifests itself in the form of Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgard). It\ndoesn\u2019t have to, it just thinks that the creepy, fang-y clown is a good default\nsetting for spreading fear. I know there are many people who are going to say,\n\u201cHe\u2019s not wrong!\u201d but clowns just aren\u2019t that scary to me. I was much more\nfreaked out by that stretched-out painting lady in the first movie. Plus there\nare a number of scenes where Pennywise\u2019s face is exaggerated with phony CGI,\nwhich makes him even less scary. By the end of this movie, I was bored of\nPennywise. I was bored of a horror movie villain who was supposed to scare me\nbased on appearance alone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least \u201cIt: Chapter Two\u201d\ndoes well when the characters are together. There\u2019s a funny reunion scene in a\nChinese restaurant where everybody has excellent chemistry with one another,\nand they aren\u2019t bad in serious scenes either. Funny, non-scary bonding scenes\nwere a strong point of the first movie too, and while they obviously can\u2019t\nlast, they offer the movie a heart not usually associated with the horror\ngenre. As for the scary scenes, I think you\u2019ll agree that whatever you find\nscary gets less scary with repetition, and what this movie thinks you\u2019ll find\nscary is repeated far too much for far too long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt: Chapter Two\u201d is rated R for\ndisturbing violent content and bloody images throughout, pervasive language and\ncrude sexual material. Its running time is 170 minutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             Back in 2017, the big-screen version of Stephen King\u2019s \u201cIt\u201d became the biggest horror movie of all time with a domestic gross of over $327 million.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44592"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}