It: Chapter Two
New Line Cinema | Release Date: September 6, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 52 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
25
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeSep 8, 2019
It adds up to a peculiar mix of the crowd-pleasing and the patience-testing, veering wildly between the entertaining and the frustrating, built round a story that ventures inexorably underground without ever getting to the heart of what lies beneath. Read full review
60
Rolling StonePeter TraversSep 4, 2019
So what’s the problem? For starters, It: Chapter Two is an ass-numbing two hours and 50 minutes. That’s a good half-hour longer than Chapter One, proving the adage that less is definitely more. The dragging pace diminishes the film’s ability to hold us in its grip. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJen YamatoSep 3, 2019
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. Read full review
60
CNNBrian LowrySep 3, 2019
It drags on nearly three hours, until a level of numbing repetition creeps into its elaborately staged scares. Read full review
60
Screen DailyKim NewmanSep 3, 2019
While the film stumbles and meanders, however, there’s no denying that it delivers enough set-pieces for three regular horror films. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 3, 2019
Skarsgård’s ripe performance, with its wicked childishness and sarcastic self-pity, remains an asset Muschietti knows how to use. But the Losers are a mixed bag, convincing less well as a unit than they did as children. Read full review
60
Total FilmJamie GrahamSep 3, 2019
A mix of the intimate and cosmic that shoots for the stars. You’ll float… and sometimes bump back to earth. Read full review
58
Original-CinJim SlotekSep 4, 2019
In between the long patches there are some scary turns, though with diminishing returns, and director Andy Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman frequently turn to fears first cousin, humour, by wise-cracking through their peril. This too gets tired. But almost anything would after nearly three hours. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeSep 3, 2019
The film isn’t an abject failure by any means; it has some funny jokes, a couple of really good performances, impressive creature and set design, and pleasing cinematography. But when it comes down to it, It Chapter Two just isn’t all that scary. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattSep 3, 2019
The main problem with Chapter Two is that it goes on, and on, for so very long. If brevity is not necessarily the soul of a good scare, it would certainly serve a story that sends in the clowns, and then lets them just stay there — leering and lurking and chewing through scene after scene — until the there’s nothing left to do but laugh, or leave. Read full review
58
IndieWireKate ErblandSep 3, 2019
It’s a whole lot less scary or fun the second time around. Read full review
55
The AtlanticDavid SimsSep 3, 2019
The length of It Chapter Two is matched by the scale of Pennywise’s big scares, assisted by the slickest visual effects money can buy, but it means the story never manages to pick up any speed. This is a lumbering brute of a film, a creaky rollercoaster that inches a little too slowly toward every drop. Read full review
54
Paste MagazineWill LeitchSep 11, 2019
When you turn those kids into adults, they lose not just most of their wonder, they lose most of their interest. They’re just some people in a horror movie trying not to get killed. And we have seen that many, many times before. Read full review
50
ScreenCrushMatt SingerSep 8, 2019
The parade of subplots and explanations keep sinking a story that previously floated along so effectively. I saw It Chapter Two a few nights ago and I think it just ended. Read full review
50
SlateJeffrey BloomerSep 6, 2019
What director Andy Muschietti and screenwriter Gary Dauberman do with this opening murder — not to mention a bizarre subplot that appears designed to counterweigh it — exploits a ghastly real-life killing for a cheap shock, delivered without context or any clear thematic underpinning. It’s obvious they failed to fully reckon with what they’ve put on the screen, and the results are grim. Read full review
50
ObserverOliver JonesSep 6, 2019
We end up spending way too much time running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fear. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenSep 5, 2019
Rather than using the extended running time to dig deep into these characters, director Andy Muschietti, who also directed the original, piles on the frights in a manner that builds to an ending drenched in hysteria. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Angelica Jade BastienSep 5, 2019
It Chapter Two moves with an almost too swift purpose, never feeling the weight of its nearly three-hour runtime; although it is long, the film feels frustratingly thin. Meanwhile, the film is aggressively sentimental, and moments of emotional catharsis or terror don’t often hit the way they need to. When they do, it is because of the dedication of the acting. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubSep 4, 2019
It Chapter Two is a messier production that barely seems coherent even with the first film as a primer. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 4, 2019
It Chapter Two is a film in need of a good ending. How badly it needs that ending is never in question, either. Hell, the movie cries out for help on the subject. Read full review
50
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsSep 3, 2019
There isn’t truly standout work from anyone in the cast, even if the cast is what makes the movie work when it does work. Thank God for Hader’s unassuming sense of humor, Ransone’s jitteriness, Chastain’s steely, intuitive resolve. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottSep 3, 2019
This 2-hour-49-minute movie drags more than it jumps, wearing out its premise and possibly also your patience as it lumbers toward the final showdown. Along the way there is some fun — some scares, some warm feelings, some inventive ickiness — to be found. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeSep 3, 2019
Though Muschietti occasionally finds lovely filmic ways to transition from one to the next, the stories don't get to resonate with each other in a meaningful or emotional way — as they might in a series of well crafted hour-long episodes. Read full review
40
Film ThreatAlex SavelievSep 7, 2019
The fact that pretty much nothing makes sense renders the dull narrative that much more difficult to bear. So many questions arise regarding the laws established in this film’s universe, I frankly don’t even know where to start. So I won’t Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 3, 2019
Like the first film, it becomes a virtual non-narrative anthology of standard jump-scares that could be reshuffled and shown in any order. The second time around, your tolerance for this is tested to destruction and beyond because, unlike the first movie, it is just so pointlessly long. Read full review
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