Jen Yamato

By selectively whittling down the novel’s interwoven time lines and characters, It Chapter Two refocuses its telling of King’s 1,100-plus-page bestseller into not just a scary clown movie — which it also is, thanks to Bill Skarsgård’s demented return as the trans-dimensional titular monster — but an elegy of memory, trauma and healing, minus the more extreme and controversial elements of the novel.

Awash in Christopher Rejano’s neon-hued cinematography and punctuated by Nick Zinner’s eerie synth soundscapes, Reeder’s meandering tale is a fever dream of ideas.

It’s too bad that the premise hints at more of a horror twist than the movie actually delivers. Heller frequently interrupts a thin story with ambiguous dashes of magical realism that only serve to confuse.

We’re left with a nightmare of identity that feels slighter than it should, unsure of where to point its knife.

Despite a snoozer of a pat ending that strains to bring its themes full circle, the live-action iteration at least proves that the franchise, with its notion of ohana and several films, spin-off series and countless plushies sold to date, hasn’t lost all its heft — just its original spark.

Try as it does to mash slasher and Christmas picture together into some kind of a yuletide “Scream,” “It’s a Wonderful Knife” so badly miscalculates both genres that you count down the minutes, wishing for a guardian angel to save its likable young stars from the movie they’re stuck in.

The sequel is a stab at world-expanding that veers off the rails as it reaches for dazzle over depth, rounding out the hit film series somewhere between a whimper and a bang.

Inspired moments can be found throughout “Eurovision” if you have the patience.

Proving her own star quality, a committed Suri guides Sam through a journey of identity and final-girl heroics that brings satisfying healing to her strained relationship with her mother.

This lethargic romantic drama forces chemistry where there is none and, worse, sells out its aspirationally cool, intelligent female protagonist with an endgame that she — and the luminous Dern — hardly deserves.

Antebellum ultimately trips over its gimmicky plotting en route to a conclusion that rings false.

Baywatch...is for those fans who couldn’t resist the show’s soapy charms. New ones who crave a summer blockbuster comedy might enjoy how much it not only owns its dumbness but hurtles itself all the way back around through a flurry of genitalia jokes and F-bombs to splash unapologetically in an R-rated surf of winking postmodernism.

“FNAF”’ instead spins out of control as it attempts the fool’s errand that has befallen many a video game movie: shoehorning a weird and immersive experience into the bones of Hollywood narrative convention.