I finally went out and watched a movie after a long time (by that I mean a month). Also, I watched this at 10:45 pm for the full horror experience. This movie ended up being 3 hours long.
Now a 3 hour long horror movie is hard to digest, I know. I don’t remember any movie in the genre being that long. But what If I told you that about half the movie (not an exaggeration) was a comedy. I AM NOT KIDDING. There are so many comedic elements and comedic scenes that you can’t stop laughing.
I am not trying to belittle the movie in any way. The comedic portions were hilarious and complemented the horror portions quite well. There are only so many scary moments and jump scares that a person can handle before they get tired of them. I am not saying people will get too scared to stop watching. I actually think people will just get bored of the repetitive horror portions. In that sense the writers did a great job moving back and forth from the horror to make an entertaining movie. I am pretty sure it was because the movie plot itself didn’t make it exciting enough to be a good pure horror movie.
Spoiler Ahead (Jump to final thoughts if you don’t want to know anything specific about the movie) –
The plot revolves around the kids returning to the town 27 years later to finally end Pennywise’s terror. Since the kids were no longer scared of Pennywise at the end of the first movie, I think the writers had to find a way to make them scared again. Well apparently, the solution was amnesia in the form of leaving the town (You have to be scared, if you do not remember not being scared, AM I RIGHT??!!). They eventually regain their memories as they spent more time in the town (Derry).
If Amnesia wasn’t enough of a repetitive movie trope, they also added flashbacks. This added to the runtime of the movie. The flashbacks were designed to help drive the plot where each kid had to find a token to sacrifice, so that they can get rid of Pennywise. Since all tokens weren’t introduced in the first movie they had to give each member of the ‘loser’s club’ their screen time to show every single one of the token being collected. This ended up causing the movie to show a few scenes that we have already seen before.
This token arc of the movie caused something I really hate in all horror movies. The whole “LET’S SPLIT UP” to cover more ground thing. At this point, ever horror movie watcher knows, the cast will end up in situations with a lot of jump scares and spending time running away from ‘IT’. I really thought this franchise was better than that. Let me clarify – I don’t mind jump scares. Every horror movies needs a few of them. However, the movie doesn’t need to force them on us. I wish they found a different way to do it.
While we are on the topic of redundant and repetitive things, let me tell you that I hated the whole scene where Pennywise lures a kid behind the bleachers and ‘tries to be her friend’ and then finally bites her head off. We saw this whole thing with Georgie. We didn’t need it again. Was it just to add another scare to the movie, I wonder?
Now that we discussed the plot of the movie, let’s go back to the entertainment value of the movie. I did rant about the plot quite a bit, but the movie was actually quite enjoyable. The movie becomes better if it is viewed as a comedy rather than a horror.
The cast in this movie did a decent job of matching the personalities of the kids from the first one. I think the one who matched his child counterpart the best was Bill Hader (playing Richie). The quirkiness, the stupidity and the comedic timing of the character were all spot on. I loved Finn Wolfhard’s portrayal of Richie and Bill Hader just made me love the character even more. For me, he was definitely the star of the movie.
Final Thoughts –
It Chapter 2 was a fun movie to watch. It wasn’t as good the first but it was a good conclusion to the franchise. I would suggest not to focus too much on the plot and just enjoy the scares and the jokes. Take a few friends along with you and just have a good time.
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