“It Chapter Two” is the finale of the “It” storyline and the sequel to the 2017 horror hit, “It.” The film is written By Gary Dauberman of “Annabelle: Creation” fame and directed by Andy Muschietti.

The film stars Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Skarsgård and Bill Hader among others. “It” is an adaptation off Stephen King’s 1986 novel of the same name and remake of the 1990 television film.

What a disappointment and missed opportunity from Warner Brothers. With “It” being thoroughly enjoyable, equally scary and heartfelt, I was beyond excited for the conclusion to Stephen King’s terrific story.

What audiences were given, was an overly-long pretentious slog of a movie that somehow manages to feel rushed and dragged at the same time.

The film felt like a messy Jackson Pollock painting with no idea of what direction it wanted to go. It was one big collage of many nonsensical scenes, that may have looked great, but could have easily been taken out to keep the movie from having an unnecessary runtime of two hours and 50 minutes.

An over the top amount of flashback scenes did nothing but slow the movie down and just lengthen the list of scenes that should not have made the final cut as they contributed little to the overall plot.

With a page count of over 1000 pages, adapting King’s novel perfectly into two feature length films would not be an easy thing to accomplish. With the novel focusing on the main characters and children and then 27 years later as adults, the Muschietti adaptation choose to split the two stories into two separate films.

The first film would follow the Loser Club’s first encounter with Pennywise as children with the second film following the same characters as adults. Majority of the novel focuses on the Losers during their adult lives, which left the distribution of stories very uneven.

“It Chapter Two” had a ton of content to adapt, and that led to a poor excuse for a horror film. Too many plot points and unnecessary scenes bog the film down and keep it from flowing from the start to the end.

The comedy present in the film was funny, but it should not take away from the horror of the film. More times than I can count, the tension was broken by a character saying something dumb just to get a laugh from the audience. I found this funny at first, but soon found it dull and uninspired.

Too much focus on crazy Pennywise sequences resulted in a hot mess of a promising film. The overabundance of these “scary” scenes lack the surprise and gravitas felt during the first film

The film included some incredible performances by the main cast, and the older counterparts of the young characters in the first film were perfectly cast for the sequel. Hader, Chastain and Skarsgård are by far the standouts of the film with James McAvoy giving a surprisingly flat performance, failing to be his normally pitch perfect self.

Beautifully shot and wonderful casting and acting were enough to keep me intrigued at first despite its initial flaws, but after the two hour mark I found myself waiting for the credits to roll. I have not left a theater as disappointed as I did after “It Chapter two”

“It: Chapter 2” gets a 5/10, for a messy, weak script that fails to juggle tone and a director who may not have known exactly what direction he wanted to go in. Incredibly strong performances and interesting visuals are not enough to save this movie from sinking.

“It: Chapter 2” is in theaters everywhere now.