‘It: Chapter 2’ is an improvement over the 2017 original, but It is still not that scary

Posted on September 13, 2019

By MARK VIOLA

I’ve reviewed hundreds of movies over the years, and since those reviews are essentially my opinion, sometimes I’m with the majority and sometimes I’m not. One such case where I was very much in the minority was with my opinion of “It,” the 2017 adaptation of half of Stephen King’s best-selling novel about a group of youngsters who must face off against the evil plaguing their small town.

The film seemed to receive almost universal praise from both critics and audiences hailing it as a terrifying masterpiece. Thanks to Hurricane Irma, I had to wait a week to see “It,” and was unable to avoid hearing so many singing the film’s praises. I went in with high expectations, and I left utterly disappointed, finding the movie “a series of seemingly random supernatural encounters featuring barely fleshed-out characters in a production that, most shocking of all, was not scary in the least.”

Now, two years later, we have “It: Chapter 2,” a sequel to the first film telling the rest of the story from King’s original novel. I felt like I needed to preface my review of this sequel with my reaction to the original to point out that I went into the new film with a very different perspective than most people. Based on the reactions I saw back in 2017, I’d say many would rate the movie (out of a possible 10) a nine. For me, it was probably a five (although I don’t rate movies in my reviews and have no plans to ever start). So, if my reaction to “Chapter 2” is to give it a hypothetical seven, that would be a step up from the original in my opinion, but a step down for most everyone else.

And, that’s exactly where we find ourselves. I found “Chapter 2” to be an improvement over the first film, although it does suffer from some of the same problems, one of the biggest being that many of the intended “scary” moments simply aren’t scary. Now admittedly, having read the book, I know generally where the story is heading, cutting down on the possible tension, but the specific effects once again seem almost comical when they’re trying to be terrifying.

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