It Chapter 2: A Decent Horror Film

  Collective Reviews by Aneara Burns and Maniya Porter

                   Photo From imdb.com

SEPT. 11, 2019: It Chapter 2 is the sequel to the 2017 movie, It. The movie picks up 27 years after the first movie. The Losers Club, now adults are called back to their hometown, Derry, to conquer their fears and defeat the murderous clown, Pennywise, once and for all.

Since I saw the first movie back in 2017 that I loved it so much, I was excited to see the characters as adults. But just like any other movie there are great parts and there are parts that could have been better. First of all, I think the director picked an amazing cast to portray the Losers. James McAvoy, Bill Hader and Jessica Chastain and all amazing talents did a great job. Bill Skarsgard did an amazing job as Pennywise. Every time Pennywise was on the screen, I was cowering in fear. Not to mention, I saw the movie in 4DX, which makes the movie even scarier. 4DX is an ultimate experience that involves motion chairs and special effects like wind and rain. Seeing the movie in 4DX really added that extra fear factor. 

The movie didn’t really give the adult cast any room for character development. We get a snippet of their adult lives in the first 15 minutes of the movie and that’s about it. We don’t really get to see how the losers have been for the past 27 years and how they’ve developed as people. The film really wants the audience to see the adults the same as they were as children. And in many scenes, I saw them try to bring the same friendship and camaraderie as the first film did. There are also a lot of time jumps between the past and the present to connect the dots to certain backstories.  I also felt there were a lot of unnecessary things that were just thrown into the movie to make it look good. There was a scene at a bike shop that was just not needed. And I think with an adaptation you have to know what to cut out and what to keep. For me the first chapter of It was way better because it’s told from the perspective of children. That makes it a lot scarier because there are ways a child would react to a killer clown that an adult could not execute properly like some of the fears the characters still had worked when they were 12 doesn’t really work well with adults.  Nonetheless, It Chapter 2 is a decent movie. It’s not as good as the first one but it still has quality.

• Aneara Burns

IT Chapter 2 was simply a movie about the Losers, a group of friends, coming back to Derry to defeat the child killing/eating clown IT. The movie was in 4Dx, an experience on it’s own. Throughout the movie whenever a scene that involved, movement or jumpscare out seats and the environment around us would accustom itself to that movement, scene or climate (It was very old during some scenes). An example would be water falling onto Aneara whenever there was a scene that involved water.   

In the beginning, each of the Losers were living their lives outside of Derry before being called back by Mike, who prior to calling them, was doing research for years on how to defeat Pennywise “IT” The Killer Clown. The group gets together at an Asian restaurant, to reconnect after 27 years. Their full memories are hazy on what happened in their childhood due to “ITs” powers, until a traumatizing experience within the restaurant with some amazing CGI effects depicting “creatures”. 

The movie overall was alright, compared to the first movie, which gave the watcher more of a feeling of the fear within a child. The movie was interesting but throughout the movie it was a tad bit boring without “IT” being on the scene. The parts that were supposedly for character development came off as bland and slow, but once “IT” made it onto the scene things got interesting and more eye-catching. The Losers club had to relive the things they feared most during their childhood so they could come back to overcome them and defeat “IT”.

I’d recommend the movie to my friends, mostly to get their thoughts on it. Even so, the movie would be best for those who saw the first movie. For those who read the book and hope or expect it to connect within this movie, I would tell them to not count on it. 

We collectively gave this movie a 7/10. We would recommend  this movie overall because it’s an ok horror movie and we would still tell our friends to see it.

• Maniya Porter

Aneara Burns and Maniya Porter are seniors at Friendship Collegiate Academy and founding members of Knightcast, Collegiate’s upcoming weekly news program.