It Chapter Two
Quality
Horror
Supernatural
Dark
Franchise Entry
AdaptationThe review
This ambitious closer to the two-part adaptation of Stephen King's doorstop novel is a bigger, sadder, weirder film than its predecessor — nearly three hours long, trading some of the first film's momentum for scale, adult melancholy, and elaborate monster set pieces. Critics are broadly warm on it: the grown-up ensemble is repeatedly singled out as the movie's great strength, with one supporting performance in particular widely called the standout, and the returning clown remains a disturbing, all-in piece of physical villainy. Reviewers consistently note that the film is at its best when balancing dread with genuine humor and emotional warmth.
The complaints are just as consistent, though. The runtime is the big one — most critics feel the middle section sags under the weight of individually staged set pieces that don't fully cohere, and the climax leans heavily on computer-generated imagery in a way many found less effective than the first film's more grounded scares. Some reviewers felt the sequel delivers fewer truly chilling moments than expected; others found individual sequences as perverse and unsettling as anything in the series. The honest characterization is that most disagreements are about pacing and degree, not whether the craft delivers — even the mixed reviews acknowledge real ambition and real scares here.
Thematically, the film works as a meditation on memory, trauma, and the pull of hometowns and childhood friendships — the idea that the bonds formed young are the ones that save you. Critics who liked it most tend to credit the ending for earning its emotional weight rather than just its spectacle; even detractors concede the finale's heart lands better than its effects. As a whole, it reads as a worthy, somewhat overlong conclusion that satisfies fans of the story more reliably than it terrifies.
Related films
It (2017)Who it's for
Fans of the 2017 first film and of Stephen King's novel who want the story's adult half given full treatment; horror viewers who like atmosphere, character backstory, and emotional payoff alongside their scares; anyone drawn to ensemble dramas about friendship and returning home, dressed in horror clothing.
Who it's not for
Viewers wanting a lean, tightly paced horror film — at nearly three hours with a slow middle, this will test patience. Those who found the first film's scares effective may be disappointed that this chapter leans more on CGI spectacle and gross-out imagery than sustained dread. Anyone avoiding intense body horror or Clown-Based Nightmare Fuel generally should steer clear. — R-rated horror violence · graphic body horror and gore · disturbing imagery including clowns and creature transformations · depictions of domestic abuse and hate-crime violence · child endangerment · brief strong sexual content · suicide referenced
Birds of a feather...
- FilmIt (2017)
The essential companion piece — the same town, the same mythology, and the same Losers' Club, told from the childhood side of the story. Everything the second film meditates on (the bonds, the wounds, the fears that take root early) is forged here, with the same signature blend of nostalgia, humor, and genuine dread. Watching both halves is the intended experience, and the tonal and thematic continuity is total.
98% - BookIt (1986)
King's source novel is the fullest version of the same story, with the dual-timeline structure that the films adapt split across volumes. It offers far deeper interiority into each character's adult life, the history of Derry as a character in itself, and the same core ideas about trauma, memory, and childhood bonds enduring into adulthood. For anyone moved by the film's emotional dimensions, the novel is the deepest dive available.
94% - BookDoctor Sleep (2013)
King's novel of a traumatized child grown into an adult battling addiction and the residue of his past shares It Chapter Two's central preoccupation: how childhood experiences shape and haunt adulthood, and whether that damage can be transformed into something redemptive. Longer and more meditative than the film version, with the same supernatural-as-metaphor-for-trauma architecture.
79% - FilmDoctor Sleep (2019)
A King adaptation about adult survivors of childhood trauma returning to confront what shaped them, blending dread with warmth and privileging character psychology over scares. Its meditation on whether childhood wounds can ever truly be healed — and on chosen bonds as redemption — mirrors the film's emotional priorities almost exactly.
73% - Film'Salem's Lot (2024)
A King adaptation that leads with emotional weight over genre mechanics: adult trauma, homecoming, and the gravitational pull of a poisoned hometown. Its warmer ensemble texture and effects-heavy finale diverge from the film's tactile gothic restraint, but the character-first approach to horror shares the same DNA.
62% - BookThe Shining (1977)
King's novel locates horror in personal demons — addiction, rage, family dysfunction — amplified by the supernatural rather than created by it, the same human-centered approach that defines It Chapter Two's best qualities. A slow-building psychological study where the haunted place reflects the people inside it, though its focus is a single family rather than a band of friends.
62% - FilmHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
The purest expression of King's small-town-as-character mode: an ordinary community whose haunted history and pre-existing rot the supernatural merely accelerates, much as Derry functions in It. Its slow-burn atmosphere and treatment of familiar spaces turning menacing will feel familiar and rewarding, though it trades friendship-as-redemption for communal dread.
60% - BookPet Sematary (1983)
The source novel offers King's fullest treatment of grief as the engine of horror, along with the fragile innocence of childhood that It Chapter Two also mourns. The Maine setting and gradual, character-first escalation feel familiar, but readers should know it embraces a darkness the It films deliberately balance with warmth.
57% - FilmThe Shining (1980)
Shares the thematic DNA of cyclical violence, the corruption of childhood innocence, and a child exploited by adult darkness, but Kubrick's clinical coldness is the opposite of It Chapter Two's warmth and ensemble intimacy. Worth recommending for the King trauma-horror lineage, with the caveat that it withholds the emotional catharsis the It films provide.
55% - FilmCarrie (1976)
De Palma's King adaptation taps the same vein of adolescent trauma — bullying, isolation, humiliation — as the force that shapes and breaks young lives. Its blend of tragedy, dread, and sympathy for damaged characters will resonate, though it's a singular character study rather than an ensemble piece about mutual salvation.
55% - BookCarrie (1974)
The novel digs even deeper into the psychological roots of horror: sustained cruelty, abuse, and repressed trauma made supernatural. Readers drawn to It Chapter Two's interest in how childhood wounds calcify will find King's sharpest early statement of that theme here, stripped of the ensemble warmth.
54% - BookGerald's Game (1992)
King at his most psychologically interior: trauma, repression, and buried memories resurfacing under extreme pressure, with the past demanding confrontation. Thematically adjacent to It Chapter Two's obsession with what adults carry from childhood, but claustrophobic and singular where It is sprawling and communal.
52%