A Review of "Jeepers Creepers 2"

Ah. The only one in the trilogy I haven't touched yet. With good reason! When I did Jeepers Creepers 3 when it first came out in September of '17 (which you can read here), I wanted so much to like it but just after another viewing when the film was released on Netflix, it was just complete cheap, chintzy and it just didn't look good. Nothing like the original film, which I still watch regularly... even outside of Halloween season. It was the second of the three I reviewed, which you can read here. I'll stand here and watch some more YouTube until you're all caught up...

...

"Say hello to my harpoon-tang."

...alright, perfect. So now, let's wrap up the trilogy by talking about Jeepers Creepers 2. Unlike 3, 2 came out quite soon after the first movie, only about two years took place between the first one and this. 3 fell into development hell for several years and wouldn't see the light of day until fourteen years; that's right. Between 2 and 3, I went to Junior High School, graduated High School, enrolled in a community college, transferred to a big university, graduated with a degree and worked the first year of my first post-college job... all without really noticing any of it. But I digress. Directed by Victor Salva, the film takes place on the 23rd day of the monster's feeding cycle and shows us a completely different set of characters. While in the first film, the Creeper stalked just two college-aged siblings, this movie has him stalking farmers, pedestrians and a high-school basketball team that just won a state championship. Let's take a bit out of this turkey and figure out if it holds up as a sequel and as a movie in general or if it's appeal and scares fall on silent, unimpressed audiences.

The film opens on the twenty-second day of feeding, where The Creeper (Jonathan Breck), disguised as a scarecrow, abducts young Billy Taggart (Shaun Fleming) in front of his father Jack (Ray Wise) and older brother Jack Jr (Luke Edwards). It's a pretty great opening sequence, very James Bond like in that it sets up the characters and prepares you for an adventure unlike any other... only with this film you can take that as either an adventure of fun or an adventure of utter bollocks, but I'll let you decide. The next day, a school bus carrying a high school basketball team and cheerleaders suffers a blowout, after one of the tires is hit by a hand-crafted shuriken made of bone fragments and human teeth. While shocking... the coaches and bus driver don't really seem too horrified by it. One just throws it down and is like "Damn thing's got teeth in it"... but then the other coach just picks it back up again. Alrighty, I guess that guy's seen enough shit to not be phased by a homemade shuriken made from human body parts. Where's our prequel backstory about that guy's life?

"I told you, I promise not to eat you."

Later, cheerleader Minxie Hayes (Nicki Aycox) has a vision of Billy Taggart and Darry Jenner (Justin Long), the dude from the first movie, who attempt to warn her about The Creeper, before he blows out another tire, disabling the bus completely. He warns her much better later, but in this dream he just points and yells silent jargon you can't decipher. With the team stranded, The Creeper abducts bus driver Betty Borman (Diane Delano) and Coach Charlie Hanna (Thom Gossom, Jr.); Coach Dwayne Barnes (Tom Taratini) attempts to flee back into the bus, but is taken by The Creeper when Scotty Braddock (Eric Nenninger) confronts him about useless high school drama. "You got a problem with me coach?" "Now's not the time for this!" then he's killed. Thanks Scotty, you limey dickhead.

After rapidly and successfully picking off the adults, the Creeper returns and, in a scene you'll either find chilling or just downright laughable, he singles out five of the students: Dante Belasco (Al Santos), Jake Spencer (Josh Hammond), Scotty, Andy “Bucky” Buck (Billy Aaron Brown), and Deaundre “Double D” Davis (Garikayi Mutambirwa... say that five times fast). How does The Creeper do this? By licking the window and making sexually suggestive faces at them. Did I mention Victor Salva was arrested and charged with being a pedophile during one of his earlier films, if not his first one? I think some fetishes are taking over here. No time for that, though, because Minxie has another vision. One in which Darry says The Creeper emerges every twenty-third spring, for twenty-three days to eat humans, and she tells the other students. However, what Darry tells her and what she tells them are two completely different things. Darry just mentions when the Creeper eats, but Minxie says that Darry told her that the Creeper has been alive for thousands of years and that nothing has been able to kill it, among many other things. This is actually explained in a deleted scene, but for the theatrical cut, you'd think they'd want to try and fix this glaring omission before the put this shit out in theaters... but I guess not.

Dawson's Creek took a dark turn after the fifth season

Meanwhile, back in Podunk county: after hearing several police reports, the Taggarts go hunting for The Creeper to take revenge for taking Billy, and soon make radio contact with the downed school bus. The Creeper attacks Bucky, but Rhonda stabs it through the head with a javelin. Dante begins prodding the Creeper’s wing, only for it to grab and decapitate him. The Creeper tears off its injured head and uses Dante’s severed head to replace its own, which again, is a pretty gnarly scene and feeds (no pun intended) off of Jezelle's explanation that the Creeper can repair itself by eating human body parts. The students decide to leave the bus to find help, but the Creeper returns and chases them into a field, where The Creeper kills Jake and takes Scotty. The Creeper flies fast, but I didn't know he could fly so fast back and forth between his hideout and the bus that he can just take all these kids in rapid succession. That's stretching it, guys. Later, when The Creeper attacks Bucky on the bus again, Taggart arrives and shoots it with a home-made harpoon (badass), but The Creeper fights off Taggart and manages to escape after flipping over the bus. Rhonda (Marieh Delfino), Izzy Cohen (Travis Schiffner), and Double D find a truck and attempt to escape but are chased by the Creeper again. Izzy pushes Rhonda out of the truck before causing the vehicle to crash, injuring both Double D and the Creeper, who loses an arm, a leg, and a wing, although Izzy crawls from the wreckage before the truck explodes. The Creeper continues to pursue Double D by leaping towards him and, when it has Double D pinned down, Taggart shows up and shoots the Creeper in the head with the harpoon. He repeatedly stabs the Creeper in the chest but it goes into a hibernation state before it can die. Which renders the entirety of the attack on the school bus, the foot chase and the climax with the harpoon gun... entirely pointless, but hey I guess they had to leave it open for a sequel; a sequel that would be trash, but hey they didn't know that at the time.

"Alright, who shot the spitball at the driver?
Don't make me come down there!"

Twenty-three years later, a group of teenagers drive to Taggart's farm, where the Creeper is a sideshow attraction, called "The Bat Out of Hell". They are actually referring to the Creeper here, not the Meat Loaf album. They see an elderly Taggart watching it with the harpoon at his side, and when they ask him if he is waiting for something, he looks up at the Creeper and says: “about three more days, give or take a day or two". Then we slow zoom on the mummified, shriveled-up corpse of the Creeper before cutting to black and rolling end credits.

So yeah, does Jeepers Creepers 2 hold up the caliber of the predecessor? No. It isn't scary, it's just somewhat chilling here and there with some jump scares thrown in. Nothing like how uncomfortable the first film could make audiences feel or just downright terrify them with its imagery. I think having some of the film take place during the day was a detriment. The Creeper is spookier when he's out lurking and flying at night. At day, he should be using the freaky rustic truck. At least that's something that the third film got right, more usage of the truck, but it also should've had way more scenes take place at night. Also, while this one is nowhere near as bad about it as the third film, this film does get cartoony with some of its special effects choices. Also, I don't know why the Creeper was so dry and dusty in the first film and why he's so wet in this one, but I guess it works.

While a fun romp and an entertaining enough spooky movie for the Halloween season, it isn't near as terrifying or unsettling as the first film, but thankfully it also isn't as cheap and laughable as the third one either. Also unlike the third film, this film's characters aren't completely forgettable. Many of them were actually very well written and had great banter between them. The scenes where they're debating who's leaving the bus and who's staying on, how they're going to pry the door open and how they're going to escape; all their lines feed off each other greatly. That's something this movie did right, great tension. Still, it does suffer by showing too much of the Creeper, not having him lurk away from prying eyes in the shadows, making animalistic movements and eating people's tongues, and really toning down everything that made the first one awesome. Again, while retroactively not going nearly as soft and bargain-counter as the third one. It nestles itself somewhere between them in terms of quality... almost as if it were the *gasp* second one. Bottom line: I enjoy a watch of it every now and then, usually after I'll watch the first one (not every time) but I can also see how people would think it's pretty weak and see it as a pretty lame horror movie to rent on a Saturday night movie night. It wasn't "Syfy Original Movie" level yet, but it was getting there...

A Re-Review of "Rob Zombie's Halloween"

You know, back when this blog first started and I used to drone on and on about Star Wars to the point where even I got tired of it, I always thought that was going to be the backbone of my blog. Now that I've gone on to talk about other movies and try to develop more of a commercial taste, re-treading old water kind of seems like a weak idea. But something came up on my YouTube recommended videos. The opening scene from Rob Zombie's touchy-feely-gory-nudity laiden remake of a slasher masterpiece... a "slasherpiece" if you will... 2007's revamp of Halloween. Watching this profanity laiden, over-the-top, cartoony, overblown, weaponized bitch-slap of a dialogue exchange between just downright horrible characters today made me cringe. Not because it was gross, but because it was just so goddamn ridiculous. It's weird to think, in 2007 I was hyped-as-hell to see this movie. I was such a fan of John Carpenter's Halloween that I was so excited to see it in theaters. Well I did and I loved it. I thought it was sweet to have my own version of Halloween to watch every October season. Now when I watch it, it annoys the piss out of me. So much has changed in the twelve years (holy balls) that this movie has been out, including my own tastes. I thought all this schlock exploitation garbage was the coolest. Now I just think it's way too over-the-top and tries way to hard too hammer its points home.

This got me thinking. Perhaps I was wrong. I think I'm turning into the grouchy 'get off my lawn' guy, you know? You'd know if you've been following since 2017 that it was then that I ranked the Halloween movies in my own personal order of preference throughout that October. I put this one at number five, but perhaps now in retrospect that may have been too generous. I did admit in my review of Halloween from 2018 that it has been bumped down to six, but even that now feels overly nice of me. So I'm going to go back, review it, and give a more updated review with my more present-day take. I recently gave it a rewatch and it's just... so 'meh' now. I'm not saying it's bad, per se, but... eh let's just go over it.

Oh crap. Where did I leave my phone?

It's Halloween in Haddonfield, Illinois, and having already exhibited signs of psychopathic tendencies, ten-year-old Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) murders the boy from Spy Kids, his older sister Judith (Little girl Jenny from Forrest Gump), her boyfriend Steve (who cares), and his mother's abusive boyfriend Ronnie (William Forsythe). Only his baby sister, Angel Myers, is spared. You don't find out her Myers name until the abysmal sequel, but we'll get to that one again too. After one of the longest trials in the state's history, which you're spared from because otherwise this movie would be three hours of absolute madness, Michael is found guilty of first-degree murder and sent to Smith's Grove Sanitarium under the care of child psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). Michael initially cooperates with Loomis, claiming no memory of the killings; his mother Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie), visits him regularly... without a white horse which, again, gets brought up in the sequel, but again, I'm getting ahead of myself. Over the following year, Michael becomes dissociative, fixating on papier-mâché masks and withdraws from everyone around him, even Deborah. When Michael kills a nurse as Deborah is leaving from one of her visits, she is unable to handle the situation and commits suicide.

So that's all the Zombie stuff. I've mentioned before. This movie is basically two half-movies thrown together, both directed by Zombie, but only one was his brain-child. The first half of the movie starts off as a complete wreck. Like... the dialogue is garbage, and I know garbage dialogue: I write it all the time in personal projects. There's a line in the opening 'debate' shall we call it where Ronnie is threatening to "choke his chicken and purge his snorkel all over someone's flappy-ass tits"... why he couldn't just say "I'm going to blow a load on her chest" is beyond me. Then he talks about how Judith, his girlfriend Deborah's teenage daughter, has a nice ass to Deborah's face... and literally tries to defend himself from complimenting his girlfriend's underage daughter's buttocks, again, to his girlfriend's face and gets mad when she gets mad. We get that Zombie's trying to show us what a scumbag loser he is but this is really pushing it. In fact, that goes for everybody in the opening. All of this over-the-top bullshittery is just overreaching at trying to hammer in details as to why Michael Myers turns evil and eventually grows up into a serial killer... but do we really care? Michael was scarier as just some schmo we didn't know who went absolutely insane at a young age and later in life just stalks and murders random babysitters. You didn't know anything about him, you just knew he was 'pure evil' and that he couldn't be stopped by mortal means. This "broken home" Michael is far too sympathetic to really be scared of, even when he's an oversized tank of an adult. Speaking of which, let's get to that.

The new Jay and Silent Bob reboot looks sick

The second half the movie starts as soon as Deborah kermits sewer slide. This is where Zombie stopped making his own garbage-dumpster-fire exploitation movie and started re-making John Carpenter's Halloween. Fifteen years after Deborah redecorated the wall behind her with a gun and her head, Michael continues making masks and not speaking to anyone. We can see he's been fed a diet of basically steak and steroids because now he's the size of your common-everyday highway billboard. Loomis, having continued to treat Michael over the years, has been instructed to move on and closes Michael's case. "Treat" is a drastic overreach if you ask me. In fifteen years, Michael really didn't do anything differently then what he was doing when he was a kid... so Loomis really is kind of a slacker. Later, Michael escapes from Smith's Grove. Depending on which version of the film you watch: The Theatrical Version has him just break out during an attempted prisoner transport, but the Director's Cut goes full Zombie mode and has Michael once again become sympathetic by stopping two dickhead characters from raping a female inmate. Well, he takes his sweet time and lets her be raped for a while before he decides to jump in and help. The Theatrical Version is better, in my opinion. The Director's Cut escape I can do without. Michael later kills trucker Joe Grizzly for his clothes and makes his way back to Haddonfield. On Halloween, Michael arrives at his now-abandoned childhood home, where he recovers the kitchen knife and Halloween mask he stored under the floorboards the night he killed his sister, her boyfriend and his dickbag father-uncle-guy.

Three characters, about one brain... all Laurie's

Meanwhile, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) and her friends Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris) and Lynda Van Der Klok (Kristina Klebe) prepare for Halloween. Throughout the day, Laurie witnesses Michael watching her from a distance. Later that night, Laurie goes over to babysit Tommy Doyle (Skyler Gisondo). Meanwhile, Lynda meets up with her boyfriend Bob Simms at Michael's abandoned home. After a hilarious re-imagining of the infamous ghost-glasses kill (which in this version wasn't even scary, it just seemed out of place) Michael appears, murders them, and then heads to the Strode home, where he murders Laurie's parents. Why? Who knows. Dr. Loomis, having been alerted of Michael's escape, arrives in Haddonfield looking for Michael. After obtaining a handgun on a same-day purchase (take that Liberals), Loomis attempts to warn Sheriff Lee Brackett (Brad Dourif) that Michael has returned to Haddonfield. Loomis and Brackett head to the Strode home, with Brackett explaining along the way that Laurie is really Michael's baby sister Angel, having been adopted by the Strodes following their mother's suicide. I did like Zombie's reveal of Laurie being Michael's sister better than the original version, which was just something that everybody but Loomis knew for fifteen years. The reveal in the original didn't make any sense. This one it feels more organic, and it adds to the tenseness and terror of Laurie's predicament and the night falling apart, and in a weird way it gives Michael motive... but again, Michael didn't need any motive, but his behavior, brutality, and actions actually feel out of love in a bizarre way, which is a twisted notion in its own right. The original Halloween didn't even bother with this connection, it was Halloween II's fault for that... or as John Carpenter put it... the fault of lack of interest and a six pack of Budweiser every day while writing... and as a result, that was far more half-assed thrown together like "Remember all that stuff that happened earlier in the night, oh by the way, Michael is Laurie's sister. Sorry Loomis, everybody knew about it, but we just didn't tell you". Damn.

Spy Kids: Game Over indee-- d'ah crap
I already made that joke.

Just because I gave that props, though, don't get excited. The night continues! Annie convinces Laurie to babysit Lindsey Wallace (Jenny Cregg Stewart) so that she can meet with her boyfriend Paul. Annie and Paul return to the Wallace home and have sex, count it the third sex scene of our movie and the fifth and sixth characters we've seen nude... so just in case the point isn't clear... this movie is rated-R; Anywho, I'm getting off topic. Michael kills Paul and attacks Annie. Bringing Lindsey home, Laurie finds Annie on the floor, badly injured but still alive, and calls 9-1-1. Michael attacks Laurie and chases her back to the Doyle home. Loomis and Brackett hear the 9-1-1 call over the radio and head toward the Wallace residence. Michael kidnaps Laurie and takes her back to their old home. There she finds Lynda's naked body in front of the grave stone of Judith Myers. Michael tries to show Laurie that she is his sister, presenting a picture of them with their mother. Unable to understand... because Michael in this touching moment still chooses to remain a mute for some reason. Seriously this whole time, I was like JUST SAY IT. Laurie fakes compassion before she stabs Michael before escaping the house; Michael chases after her, but Loomis arrives and shoots him three times. Recovering, Michael recaptures Laurie and heads back to the house. Loomis again intervenes, but Michael crushes his skull. Laurie takes Loomis' gun and runs upstairs, but Michael corners her on a balcony and charges her head-on, knocking both of them over the railing. Laurie awakens on top of an unconscious Michael, and shoots him in the head just as he awakens. Laurie begins screaming hysterically as police sirens are heard approaching... and the movie just decides to stop there.

The I.Q. of a beer bottle and the mouth of a six-year-old
that just discovered all of the cuss words

Sigh... so yeah, I rewatched this movie this season and it just didn't do it for me like it did when I was in high school. I guess I was just giddy at being fourteen and watching such a mental mind-fuck of an R-Rated movie. I used to watch it just like the others every Halloween, but I find myself popping this one in less and less. However, don't let make you think my opinions on the other shithouse sequels are improving. I assure you this is not the case. My point is that I gave this one sort of too high of props last time and it needed to be addressed. The same reasons I hate lots of things about this movie are the ones why I hate House of 1000 Corpses. I don't know how he smartened up enough to make The Devil's Rejects, which still remains my favorite Rob Zombie movie, but you can tell since this and H2 that Rob Zombie's movie career has gone down hill, resorting to releasing subpar gorefests for D-Level studios under the radar every few years. I haven't even bothered to watch them. The Lords of Salem, 31 and now there's a third installment in the House/Rejects trilogy 3 From Hell. Hopefully it'll be in the same vain as Rejects but I won't hold my breath.

Oh it's the missing member of SlipKnot... Orange-y.

Halloween 2007, upon further viewing, doesn't do it for me anymore. It's kills sacrifice scare tactics for brutality, its characters are awkward mishmashes of energetic and chilling to obnoxious dillholes that won't shut up. The first half characters are contemptable, unnaturally-speaking sociopaths that just bore and weird the shit out of me, but that's not saying much about the second-half; they're all just carbon-copies put in the movie solely to fill the spots they were meant to. I guess that means the story pays homage to the '78 original enough but then it adds a bunch of 1970s grindhouse elements that don't mix well. Zombie's cinematography in the beginning is fun, sure, with some energetic angles and wide-lens shots, but the second-half kind of feels rushed and half-assed like he just didn't care anymore. Some of the story choices even make plot holes. Like why is Michael granted the right to use metal silverware in the Sanitarium despite being convicted of first-degree murder? Shouldn't inmates be relegated to using plastic cutlery?

It's alright, the sheriff only sounds like Chucky.

Look, who cares. I'm not trying to shit on this movie for everybody, just me. If you're a gore fan, then perhaps this movie succeeded on some level for you, and there are some cool scenes in it. For some reason, despite my earlier gripe, the scene where Michael kills the nurse in the sanitarium and all you hear is the alarm as things fall apart, that's a pretty cool scene. Also the Danny Trejo character was easily the coolest, most down to Earth person in the entire movie... and Michael kills him. That just goes to show that there's no escape whether you're a great character or a colossal shit sandwich.

If you're in it for deep chills and compelling scares, you'll probably be pretty bored. If you're here for nudity... well I won't get into that psychological debate. I just prefer my Halloween films to be much simpler. The less explained about Michael, the better. He was the child of a white-collar, suburban family that went deranged because he was simply "pure evil". Giving him all this backstory demystified him and made it too straightforward. Like, of course the child of some trailer-trash family who gets bullied at home and at school is going to one day snap and kill people. With the original, it unnerved you because you wouldn't see it coming. It just explained way too much. Halloween's 2007 remake I can ultimately do without. I suppose we can swap it with H2O in my personal preference list from a couple years back... because at least that movie had Jamie Lee Curtis and was more of an homage to the original than this one. Take it as you like it.

A Review of "IT" (2017)

As we eek closer to the spookiest palooza of the year, let's dust off some good ol' fashioned horror movies and take a peek. I recently saw IT: Chapter Two and I want to go over what I think about both it and it's predecessor. IT was such a hit upon release, breaking many R-Rated movie records as well as Horror movie records, that I feel it actually doesn't get quite enough credit it deserves. Well... maybe. I rewatched the first one yesterday prior to skipping off to catch the sequel, and I have some thoughts. Let's dive in and see why IT was such a... HIT. (*Ba dum tss*)

In October 1988, Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher) crafts a paper sailboat for Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott), his six-year-old brother. Georgie sails the boat along the rainy streets of small town Derry, Maine (take a shot for a Stephen King story that takes place in Maine), only to have it fall down a storm drain. As he attempts to retrieve it, Georgie sees a clown in the drain, who introduces himself as "Pennywise the Dancing Clown" (Bill Skarsgård). Pennywise entices Georgie to come closer, then bites his arm off and drags him into the sewer. Let me stop right there by saying this... while Skarsgård is a far more terrifying demonic entity, that is also technically his down fall in these situations. No kid would be drawn to a clown that drools, looks cross-eyed and snarls at them. Tim Curry, who played Pennywise in the 1990 TV Miniseries, was a far better clown, something that counts if the victims are children. The debate is there. Ultimately, for me, it's a toss-up on which one's the better Pennywise. They both bring their own pros and cons.

The following summer, Bill and his friends Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard), Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer), and Stan Uris (Wyatt Oleff) run afoul of older bully Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) and his gang. Bill, still haunted by Georgie's disappearance, calculates that his brother's body may have washed up in a marshy wasteland called the Barrens. He recruits his friends to investigate, believing Georgie may still be alive. Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), one of Bill's new classmates, learns that the town has been plagued by unexplained tragedies and child disappearances for centuries. Targeted by Bowers' gang, Ben flees into the Barrens and meets Bill's group. They find the sneaker of a missing girl named Betty Ripsom, while a member of the Bowers Gang, Patrick Hockstetter (Owen Teague), is killed by Pennywise while searching the sewers for Ben. That was a plus. Glad to see Patrick go so we didn't have to get that awkward handjob scene pulled from the novel. Man... cocaine made Stephen King write a lot of odd things in the 80s. Thanks Mr. King, for freaking the fuck out of me in junior high school.

Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis), a girl bullied over rumors of promiscuity, also joins the group; both Bill and Ben develop feelings for her. Later, the group befriends orphan Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs) after defending him from Bowers. Mike has it rough because he seems to be the only black guy in Maine... which doesn't surprise me being, you know, "Maine" and all. Each member of the group has encountered terrifying manifestations of the same menacing clown who attacked Georgie: a headless undead boy, a sink that spews blood only children can see, a diseased and rotting leper, a disturbing painting come to life (that was a disturbing scene), Mike's parents burning alive (disturbing to think about), and a frightening phantom of Georgie. Now calling themselves "The Losers Club", they realize they are all being stalked by the same entity, which they refer to as "It". They determine that It assumes the appearance of what they fear most, awakening every 27 years to feed on the children of Derry before returning to hibernation, and moves about by using the sewer lines, which all lead to an old stone well hidden under an abandoned house. After another attack by Pennywise in the garage through the projector, the group ventures to the house to confront It, only to be separated and terrorized. As Pennywise gloats to Bill about Georgie, the Losers regroup and Beverly impales Pennywise through the head, forcing the clown to retreat. The group flees the house and begins to splinter, with only Bill and Beverly resolute in fighting It. A couple of months pass as the group remains fractured and alone, thinking on the fate of Derry as they know it.

Weeks later, after Beverly confronts and incapacitates her sexually abusive father (a scene that makes my skin crawl), she is abducted by Pennywise. The Losers Club reforms and travels back to the abandoned house to rescue her. Bowers, who has murdered his abusive father after being driven insane by It, attacks the group; Mike fights back and pushes Bowers down the well to his apparent death. The Losers descend into the sewers and find It's underground lair, which contains a mountain of decayed circus props and children's belongings, around which the bodies of It's child victims float in mid-air. Beverly, now catatonic after being exposed to bright lights inside It's gaping mouth, is restored to consciousness when Ben kisses her. Bill encounters Georgie, but recognizes that he is It in disguise. As Pennywise, It takes Bill hostage, offering to spare the others and go into hibernation if they let It feed on Bill. The Losers reject this, battling with It while overcoming their various fears. It is eventually defeated and retreats deeper into the sewers, with Bill declaring that It will starve during its hibernation. Finding the remnants of Georgie's raincoat, Bill finally comes to terms with his brother's death and is comforted by his friends. Thankfully again, the movie skips over the prepubescent sex scene of each of the boys running a train on Beverly... which is, yeah, another things that happens in the book... so thanks again Mr. King.

As summer ends, Beverly informs the group of a vision she had while catatonic, where she saw them fighting It again as adults. The Losers swear a blood oath that they will return to Derry as adults if It returns. After the others make their goodbyes and disperse, Beverly and Bill discuss her leaving the next day to live with her aunt in Portland. Before she leaves, Bill reveals his feelings and they kiss.

It is a far more faithful adaptation of the book than its 1990 TV Miniseries counterpart, but still neglects many of the more prominent and, shall we say 'memorable' scenes that the book depicts. It carries a lot of weight in just a short two hour and fifteen minute run time, so it feels a little rushed having to make sure they cover everything about the kids from the novel in that amount of time. As for the kids themselves, I don't think it's a question that Richie and Eddie's banter steals the show, but that's not to rob from the other kids at all. They were all interesting, compelling characters. In a group of this many characters, typically you have one or two duds that you would rather see die than hog more screen time, but in this movie, it is not the case. Henry Bowers, as your average-run-of-the-mill Stephen King bully character, is even interesting to follow with. Still, with everything it had to adapt, the movie did a fine job of maintaining the themes of the story and the carrying over the ideas. Sure, some horror movie tropes sneak in... fake jump scares, long build-ups to such fake scares, and maybe perhaps and over-reliance on jump scares themselves... but I'll still pop It in and give it a watch whenver. The witty characters, the compelling dialogue and the horrifying story all meld together into one fun, albeit jump-scare'y experience.