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Rohon Nag
  • 4/5
We will ALL FLOAT!

Released in 2017, IT was a brilliant film. However, due to deluge of new films and shows, I barely remembered anything about it. Not to mention it’s very easy to mentally mix up stranger things and IT, especially since they share 1 cast member in a lead role.

Therefore, before seeing part 2 of IT, I had to re-watch the first part and BOY am I glad I did so!

IT Chapter 2 starts off with the re-emergence of Pennywise the clown after a gap of 27 years. The 13 year children in the first part are now all grownup and must come back to Derry to face the clown.

The first thing that really good about the film is the casting. Every adult version of the child actors look PERFECT and there is no break in believability. They look like they grew up and its completely believable.

Part 1 was great due to the amazing acting and performances by the child cast and fortunately, this film doesn’t lose anything despite adults now leading the film. The 1990 version suffered from an issue of the adults being REALLY boring. Not the case this time. The thing I was dreading the most was how much the adult actors will be able to emulate their child versions and they have gotten it done PERFECTLY.

Then there is Pennywise the clown. He is the villain most horror movie villains wish they were… He is scary, menacing and the stuff of nightmares. They haven’t overdone his role for this part despite the huge positive reception of his character in the first part. The thing with such popularity is that the producers try to overdo it and the villain becomes a joke (Kylo Ren anyone?). but Pennywise comes in seldom but when he does, he manages to scare the on screen characters and real life audiences at the same time.

The film itself is VERY plot heavy and there is a LOT of things that happen. This is not your quick one and half hour typical jump scare fest. The film runs for almost two hour and 40 minutes and there is a LOT going on. If you have not seen the first part in a while or at all, it’s a good idea to see that. Its available on Netflix. Without remembering details from the first part its sort of difficult to understand what’s going on and when in this one.

This was a 5 hour film that’s been split into two halves so it makes sense to be very closely connected to its prequel.

As for the book adaptation, this part shows/references a LOT of things that happened in the book version and not in the first part but we assume they took place somewhere in the background. So for people who haven’t read the book (most people I assume) the things they show sometimes can be a bit confusing, references like ‘beep beep’ make much more sense to the book reader. In a way you can say that they have added in lots of easter eggs for the hard core crowd also.

The ending is a bit drawn out and they went the Return of the King route with multiple false endings to give it a sense of grandeur and it’s the right decision for this story. This is not just a horror film, it’s a coming of age film, it’s a film about friends and the meaning of life and how things change. So that sort of thing does take some time to wrap up.

Rating: A solid 8/10. VERY good sequel to the first part. Combined with Part 1, this becomes the best-adapted Stephen King novel until date on the big screen.

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