"It: Chapter 2" review

He's baaaack. Pennywise, that is. Stephen King's evil clown who single-handedly ruined the profession of clowning and destroyed the joy of childhood. Like a stubborn boil, he's (or It's) reappearing in It: Chapter Two. Avoid sewers, red balloons, and, just to be safe, the entire state of Maine.

All kidding aside, it's time for the damnation of faint praise. As usual, I'll start by saying nice things.

Director Andy Muscietti’s two-part movie does a credible job of distilling King’s massive tome. The writing is clever; the special effects rock; the actors act from their hearts; the CGI kicks ass. (And I really loved the nod to John Carpenter's The Thing.) But ...?

But Chapter One packed more of a punch. It had a simpler story structure. (Aggh, there’s a crazy killer clown in the sewers. Losers, unite! Kill the clown!) That's pretty much It.

Chapter Two gets complicated. Gary Dauberman's screenplay adds a vision quest thing. Once the present-day Losers assemble in Derry, they must each find a beloved token of their traumatic childhoods and sacrifice it in the Ritual of Chud to kill the clown. This necessitates constant flashbacks to the adolescent Losers. It's compelling material, but it drags the story's rhythm. It also makes the horror predictable. (Loser revisits past. It gives him/her a jump-scare. Loser narrowly escapes.)

To create his adaptation, Dauberman makes different choices than the TV miniseries. (I prefer most of his choices.) He trims or kills expendable passages and bits of business. He shoehorns in more of King's longwinded novel by means of clever synecdoches. You see It’s arrival on earth in Mike's flashback. The smokehole ceremony is another trippy flashback. Also Mike's. It's sharp, economical writing. But ...

The screenwriter makes King's long story short in Chapter One. In Chapter Two, he makes a short story long with those incessant Stand-by-Me-esque flashbacks to the Losers' unhappy childhoods. 

It's great writing, don't get me wrong. Character-based. Moving. Imaginative. There's a lot of good stuff. But there's too much stuff. All that extra material would make for a great, new miniseries. But it drags the movie down in Chapter Two. And that's not so great.

Like an evil clown emerging from the sewer, a great horror movie should scare the living bejeezus out of you.

It should never feel slow.