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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/16ba9583_51da_4982_ba2d_89da9afad342.jpeg]]
2[[caption-width-right:350:"For 27 years... I dreamt of you. I craved you. '''I MISSED YOU!!!"''']]
3Pennywise is back... with a fresh dose of NightmareFuel to boot. The second part to a story based on arguably Creator/StephenKing's scariest novel, and a sequel to [[Film/IT2017 a film]] considered absolutely horrifying, featuring a Pennywise who survived his defeat by the Losers and is now out for {{revenge}} as a result. And we know how horrible he was in the first film, when he was just toying with his prey, this time ''this thing doesn't hold back''.
4
5For [[Film/It2017 Chapter One]], see [[NightmareFuel/It2017 here]].
6
7'''Unmarked spoilers below!'''
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9* Pennywise as a whole in this movie. As mentioned above, this is not the same Pennywise from the first film who liked to toy around with the Losers just because he could torment them and didn't take them seriously. Pennywise was nearly killed last time, he's scared of the Losers, and now that the Losers are all back, he's out for blood. He wants to break them all down psychologically, torment them, corner them all into his lair, and have the pleasure of killing them. He's been dreaming of this, by the way, for ''twenty-seven years''. And he means it.
10* The gore in the film. Chapter One had the courtesy of cutting away as kids suffered the torment of Pennywise or not showing them being lured in and killed by him (apart from Georgie, of course). This film doesn't have the same courtesy. We see what happens to his victims and it's as horrific as you'd expect.
11* The entire Adrian Mellon scene has been kept in from the book, but it's much, much worse.
12** A bunch of homophobic teens brutally beat up Adrian and his boyfriend before chucking him off of a bridge. The scariest part of the scene is how unprovoked the initial attack is against Adrian. He and his partner are just minding their own business when the BrattyHalfPint walks up and spits at them. Adrian attempts to stand up for himself, but is beaten and thrown off the bridge, where he most likely would have died alone even without Pennywise's intervention. Worst of all is that [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters there's no indication IT was controlling or influencing the attackers in any way]].
13** Then Adrian is left drowning, only to be dragged out by--unfortunately for him--Pennywise, freshly pissed-off from his previous defeat by the Losers. Pennywise then stares into the camera and bites a massive chunk of flesh off of Adrian's armpit before angrily chewing on his flesh, all while staring at Adrian's boyfriend and [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou YOU, the viewer]]. He starts to smile wider and wider right before he takes one big bite.
14** While Pennywise is chewing Adrian's flesh, you hear his mandibles ''click'' from how powerful his jaw is. This also hints at his true form being much more than just the already intimidating Pennywise. Pennywise doesn't just bite out a piece of flesh from Adrian; he bites so deep and so hard that he kills Adrian by ''ripping out his heart''. This wouldn't instantly kill Adrian. Pennywise knows this. Adrian would die a slow and excruciating death from the blood loss caused by the massive cavity in his armpit. Pennywise wants Adrian to suffer for as long as possible.
15** There's something so creepy and off-putting about how the whole bridge is then covered in red balloons after watching this absolutely horrific scene. Almost like a demented celebration of the whole thing from Pennywise announcing he's back.
16** The "Come Home" message for Mike, who arrives at the crime scene after? That was most likely written with ''[[CouldntFindAPen Adrian's blood]]''. The whole thing was a sick way for Pennywise to let the Losers know that he's back and out for revenge.
17* Pennywise's murder of Victoria, a little girl.
18** The tiny little laugh, and the way his head moves, after Pennywise tells Victoria "I guess I must be your friend, too" is horrifying. It's almost a perfectly innocent clown laugh yet there's something so... wrong and inhuman about it. It's so painfully obvious Pennywise isn't really a clown and has... other intentions just based on this alone.
19** She is understandably terrified, but Pennywise draws her back in by fake crying about how everyone finds him ugly. He then promises to "poof" away her port-wine facial birthmark on the count of three. He can't even make it to three before he's staring at this poor girl, drooling all over the place. Three guesses what happens next. Pennywise launches himself at Victoria, opening his mouth all of the way. As soon as he lunges, we have a quick shot of Pennywise's jaws clamping on Victoria's face before immediately cutting away. In his own twisted way, he didn't ''lie'' about getting rid of her birthmark. Can't have a facial birthmark with ''no head'', after all.
20** There's something so creepy about how childlike Pennywise acts, yet how off it is at the same time.
21** There's also HEAVY elements of fear to take in here. Sure, the entire concept of the story is technically parental worries (with children disappearing and AbusiveParents), but Victoria's death is the most realistic it's been so far; some creepy guy in a public place wins her trust by appealing to her sympathy, then lures her closer and promises her gifts and special things... it's just ''OOZING'' [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything with images of a predator taking a child away]].
22** Just before this we see Victoria's mother urge her not to stray too far just as she walks underneath the bleachers. How she reacted to seeing her daughter's headless corpse is left solely to the viewer's own imagination.
23* The creators said there was probably an original Bob Gray/Pennywise before It took him on as its favorite form? We seem to get a glimpse of him. After Beverly gets chased out of her old home by the horrifying form that Mrs. Kersh takes, she sees a door open with someone inside. Bob then turns around and tells Beverly that she can't change anything, and it's obvious he's Pennywise, even without any makeup. He then rubs white paint on his face as he taunts Beverly, before [[FacialHorror scratching his face open]] to form his signature red clown lines, [[LaughingMad laughing crazily]] and then letting out ''[[HellIsThatNoise an UNEARTHLY HOWL]]''.
24** Just the sight of Bob himself is terrifying, even before he puts on his bloody clown makeup. He looks human [[UncannyValley except he has Pennywise's off-center eyes, massive forehead, weird hair, and almost baby-like appearance]], and he's [[{{Squick}} constantly drooling as he speaks]]. It's almost freakier seeing a man who is clearly Pennywise but without clown makeup than seeing Pennywise himself.
25** [[YouDoNotWantToKnow What exactly did happen to Bob Gray? Judging by this, it doesn't seem pretty.]] We see that the It terrorizing Native Americans didn't once take on the shape of a clown. So what became of the man that eventually served as It's favorite form? Pennywise's wagon was at the bottom of It's pile of trophies after all, and was by far the biggest. As if it were the most prized one.
26* Mrs. Kersh.
27** It becomes really obvious early on that she's It in disguise. Whether it's her giving Beverly the creepiest smile in existence for an uncomfortably long time, or jerking around in the background. It doesn't help that her dialogue is almost immediately followed by heavy thumping footsteps.
28--->'''Mrs. Kersh:''' I was always Daddy's little girl... what about you? ''[[VoiceOfTheLegion Are you still his little girl, Beverly?]]'' '''''[[SuddenlyShouting ARE YOU?!]]'''''
29** Mrs. Kersh's form: a [[SinisterNudity naked]], zombified, lanky, and gross elderly wraith as tall as the ceiling, with [[CreepyLongArms long spindly limbs]], [[NightmareFace an utterly inhuman face]], horrifying fish-like eyes which are way too big, and ''extra mouths on her neck'' that swiftly chases after Beverly. It's implied she's basically a rotting corpse at this point; when she fans herself, she reveals decaying flesh on her chest, and there are flies all over the apartment. The decaying flesh on her chest isn't just indicating she's basically a corpse at this point. It's a scar from where Ben skewered Pennywise with a pike in Chapter One.
30* Henry is reintroduced as being shown to have spilled out of the sewers after Mike pushed him down the well. He is washed out along the corpses of Pennywise's victims, shrieking continuously as he resurfaces. That alone is pretty much an indication that whatever he saw down there [[GoMadFromTheRevelation completely demolished his psyche]].
31** Henry as he gets arrested isn't exactly much better. He screams and screams incoherently about how he was meant to kill them all like Pennywise said to, trying to fight off the officers while doing so, and this is ''after'' It went back into early hibernation. Just what did he see to break his sanity like that?
32** While we're on the topic of Henry, he's [[MadeOfIron a rather tough cookie to kill]], suffering horrendous injuries no life-form should '''''ever''''' be able to survive. And it takes a hatchet through the brain to kill him. He survived falling down a massive well and having his skull smashed hard ''multiple times'' against the insides on the way down, and survived a knife through his heart, stuff which would have killed most normal humans. In fact, they don't even seem to phase him anywhere as much as they should realistically. Is this him just being really hard to kill? Or could it be that It imbued him with [[NighInvulnerability unnatural resilience]], on top of breaking and taking over his mind, so he could kill the Losers to please the beast?
33** Henry's adult self is just as terrifying. The way he chases after the red balloon, [[AdmiringTheAbomination delighted to see Pennywise]], the embodiment of ''pure torment and evil''. The fact he's really clearly been taken over by Pennywise but with just enough of him there that he's still Henry, an insane and psychopathic bully. Or how deranged and incoherent he is at pretty much all times.
34* Richie's lost memory has him alone after being told off by Henry and [[KickTheDog his cousin]]. Alone on the bench in the park, he hears a distorted voice say "Want a kiss Richie?" Looking up, he sees the giant Paul Bunyan statue gone. Turning, he sees it, but with a horrible sharp teeth roaring in his face, unleashing a swarm of bats. With cracks at its limbs to allow it to move, the being attempts to slash, stab and crush Richie, with pieces of it breaking off as it chases him, its nose snapping off and appearing almost skeletal. It prepares to impale Richie and he hears Pennywise's trademark cackle from its mouth, having to repeat over and over that it's not real to avoid death.
35* The fortune cookie scene. In an edit from the book, each Loser gets one word in each fortune cookie message. The boys get 'guess', 'could', 'not', 'cut', and 'it', and they argue over what the hell the message is and means, and what order the words go in. Then they realize they haven't got Beverly's word: 'Stanley'. The implication is clear. Then as they realize what's happened to Stanley, Pennywise taunts them with horrifying hallucinations. They immediately remember why they were so scared. Think along the lines of a fleshy, baby-faced cockroach thing that cries exactly like a human baby. Or an eyeball with a ton of tentacles that crawls across the table,[[note]]A reference to the monsters from ''Film/TheCrawlingEye'', noted in the book to be the only film that truly scared Richie.[[/note]] with a shrieking, still-living bird fetus thrown in. How about the severed heads of Pennywise's victims singing nursery rhymes in the aquarium? Pennywise isn't messing around.
36* Adding to this, everyone who's left Derry since the events of their childhood seems to have forgotten all the horrifying stuff they've gone through since the first scene. Pennywise has the entire town under his control to forget or ignore all of the horrifying things he does, so when you leave Derry, you forget why you were so terrified there to begin with.
37** When the Losers answer Mike's phone call, they're so afraid that they have physical, visceral reactions to the thought of facing It again. Richie throws up, Eddie crashes his car, and one of Bill's hands starts shaking, with his stutter also coming back. And let's not even mention Stan. But they can't remember ''why'' they were so afraid to begin with. Despite all of the horrifying trauma of the first film, they outright forgot all of it, because It's MindControl is that powerful.
38** Stan's reaction is to ''[[DrivenToSuicide kill himself]]'', which is scary and saddening enough on its own, but then the remaining Losers discover something even more frightening: Their childhood encounter with Pennywise has "infected" them with something that will eventually result in their PsychicAssistedSuicide if they don't kill It before the next cycle. The rest of the group's deaths will play out similarly to how Beverly predicted Stan's. The fact that It's presence has fundamentally altered something in each of the Losers, such that it will drive them to suicide (despite full knowledge of the infection) if they don't kill him first, is pretty scary.
39* Bill's visions of It terrorizing the local indigenous people, shown in the style of wood-carved puppets. Even depicted as a wooden puppet, It's GiantSpider form is terrifying.
40* The hall of mirrors scene. Pennywise lures Bill into a funhouse and wants to exploit his guilt over Georgie's death. Bill and Pennywise both try to smash their respective mirror to get to Dean. Pennywise gets there first, [[SlasherSmile letting off a smile which will haunt your dreams]] before biting the kid's head so hard, it explodes like an overripe watermelon being smashed with a hammer, painting the mirror red.
41** Before smashing through the glass, just as Bill tells Dean that he can save him, they hear a sliding noise from the glass in front of Bill. The camera then looks down to reveal Pennywise ''licking the glass with an inhumanly long tongue''.
42** The way Pennywise breaks open the glass is just unsettling. He doesn't just punch it to break through it; he smashes the glass gradually by ''bashing'' his head against the glass, putting the entire heft of his body behind each smash, and doesn't flinch once while ramming his face into the glass. If you look closely, Pennywise's face makes expressions impossible for an actual human face between each impact. Just in case you had any doubt that there was nothing human about Pennywise (somehow), this scene reminds us that he is a [[EldritchAbomination purely malevolent entity with no concept of morality]], with a tiny layer of glamour to lure in kids and scare people who hate clowns.
43** Pennywise wants Bill to watch and helplessly try to kick the glass down, so he can taunt Bill with the fact that he can't save Dean from a gruesome end. In fact, Pennywise specifically sent Bill a message warning him about Dean, all so Bill would rush to the fair and try to save him, only to fail and watch the boy die a terrifying and bloody death. ''[[KickTheDog Damn]]''.
44*** As with everything Pennywise does, the sheer glee he takes in tormenting his victims and prolonging their suffering for as long as possible is just fucking creepy. He looks so happy and amused when he first bangs his head on the glass, letting his victims know exactly what he's going to do; and gaining sick satisfaction from watching them suffer and anticipate the inevitable.
45** On top of all of this, Dean has been seeing Bill and his friends everywhere he goes. Richie yelled at him in the restaurant and Bill talked to him in the street, then was following him around at the carnival and into the funhouse to see him die. Dean probably thinks Bill is stalking him.
46** To make matters worse, viewers may think "Why couldn't Dean just run away when Pennywise smashed his head on the mirror wall?" but if they rewatch the scene, they can see that Dean was trapped inside a very small section of the labyrinth surrounded by 4 walls, as if ''Dean was put on a glass display''. Not only did it effectively accomplish the purpose to torment Bill over his guilt from the other side of the glass, it was also an effective method to milk every bit of fear from Dean as he could only stand in horror as Pennywise broke the glass. As if viewers are not yet convinced to what extent Pennywise's cruelty can be...
47* The sudden reappearance of Patrick's corpse during the hospital scene. The way he crawls out from underneath the bed is enough to scare Henry shitless.
48* Bill reaches into the sewer in order to save Georgie, but something grabs his hand. And that something turns into thousands of tiny hands.
49* So we all know in the end that Pennywise becomes a GiantSpider. However, in this version, he's something akin to a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drider drider]], with his upper half still mostly in clown mode. And this form is larger than the original incarnation of the spider, all the more menacing and wrong for it.
50-->'''Pennywise:''' '''Time to ''floooaaaat...!'''''
51* During the final fight, Richie overcomes his fears and faces Pennywise, but during his ReasonYouSuckSpeech to Pennywise, he gets hit with Pennywise's Deadlights and just becomes catatonic almost immediately, unable to deal with the sheer horror of the Deadlights, his whole body just going limp.
52** Although seeing Eddie hit Pennywise with the spear and save Richie is awesome, the sight of the spear in his Deadlights, with Pennywise's face fully lifted up and coughing up Deadlight juice is pretty horrifying.
53* Poor Eddie. He gets impaled by Pennywise's weird elastic spider arm, slowly crushed by It while Pennywise takes joy in making him suffer, before being tossed like a ragdoll by Pennywise into a cave and left to slowly bleed to death from a massive hole in his chest. All while Richie watches in horror.
54* The way Pennywise dies is pretty horrific, [[KarmicDeath comeuppance aside]]. The giant clown spider slowly and painfully dissolves into a small lump of flesh, becoming almost like a shriveled, melted baby with multiple arms and weird tendrils for legs. He becomes completely and utterly helpless, enabling Mike to [[AndShowItToYou reach into his chest and pull out his heart]]. The Losers then crush it into paste as Pennywise screams in pain before finally falling silent.
55** As the Losers tear out Pennywise's heart, it can be heard beating. As the group prepares to crush it, the heart beats progressively louder and faster until it reaches an almost maddening speed... signifying that ''[[HorrifyingTheHorror IT, the ancient and abstract manifestation of predation itself, is absolutely terrified and panicking knowing it's going to die]]''.
56** There's something a bit terrifying about the way Richie savagely rips off Pennywise's one remaining arm when he's already going through a horrific demise. While it's definitely deserved, Richie going just berserk because of what Pennywise did to Eddie is a bit unsettling.
57* How Pennywise torments Ben as a child. Beverly sits with Ben after class and chats to him, but it's clear something is... a bit off with her. She slyly taunts Ben about how he has no friends in an uncharacteristic way. When Ben goes to kiss her is when the real nightmare begins, though. She tells Ben he's ugly and fat and gross; at that point, it becomes obvious she's not Beverly but Pennywise. Her hair then [[FlamingHair literally turns into fire]] and her eyes turn demonic and she chases Ben around the school, shrieking Ben's poem like a banshee the whole time as her head's flesh slowly burns off.
58** It gets worse. Ben goes inside his locker to try and hide from It. He thinks he's safe...only to turn around and see that Pennywise is ''with him in the locker''.
59** It then torments Ben about how he's fat and will die alone, before baring his teeth as if to eat Ben, but then disappearing. Even for Pennywise, who is basically evil incarnate, this is cruel.
60* At one point in the movie, Bill, Richie, and Eddie open up a fridge to find the head of a young Stan. Said head grows spider-like legs from the side of its head and begins to attack the three men. Kind of a step-up compared to the fridge scene in the miniseries, isn't it?
61** And if that weren't bad enough, as it transforms, Stanley's head makes all these [[TransformationTrauma horrible, pained noises, tearfully begging to know what's happening to him]]. Yikes.
62** The spider legs graphically dig their way out from inside Stanley's skull, some of them even emerging from his ''[[EyeScream eye sockets]]'' and [[{{Squick}} horrifically stretching Stanley's eyelids]] as they do so. Some of the legs are too short to reach the ground, and are apparently only there to make the head look worse.
63* Ben nearly gets {{buried alive}} during their final confrontation. Worst of all: Pennywise doesn't even bother to eat him, instead taking sadistic pleasure in shutting off the only exit and forcing Ben in near-darkness as the walls begin to crumble, with him knowing that he will [[DyingAlone die alone]].
64** Worse still, Pennywise is burying him alive in the Losers' old clubhouse. The place of so many happy memories for Ben, the clubhouse he took pride in constructing, is being twisted into a sick hallucination designed to prey on his worst fears.
65* Eddie's encounter with the Leper as a child. Eddie goes into the basement of the Keene pharmacy, where he sees his mother tied to a chair. On the other side of the room? The Leper, chained away, who proceeds to slowly and disturbingly make his way to Eddie's mother before sticking his nasty, diseased tongue down her throat. [[DeusSexMachina The implication is clear]].
66** Before that, we get a really suspenseful scene with Eddie walking down a filthy, dark hallway full of used medical equipment, complete with close-up shots of rusty syringes and Eddie getting tangled up in some IV bags, all while his mother is behind a curtain with only her shadow shown, pleading for help. The fact that she's [[NothingIsScarier hidden from view]] the entire time gives you the interpretation that something is seriously wrong with her, like she's afflicted with some sort of disease or BodyHorror. While she turns out to be normal, albeit terrified and strapped to a chair, it still doesn't get any better from there with the above scene coming into play.
67* The "Not Scary at All" Door during the final battle with Pennywise. Richie and Eddie open the door to find a lovely little Pomeranian. How cute! And when they tell him to sit, he sits, looking adorably at them. As the two guys think it's harmless, the dog then proceeds to suddenly turn into [[AnimalisticAbomination a horrifying, demonic, skeletal, growling canine monster]].
68** Before that, they try the "Very Scary" door to find a closet, and in a similar repeat in Chapter One, they hear the voice of Betty Ripson crying out for her shoe. However, this time around, ''her missing legs start skipping towards the door at them!''
69* During Bill's fight against IT, he sees his younger self talking to Georgie, [[CreepyChild repeating the phrase]], [[MadnessMantra "you lied, and I died. You lied and I died! YOU LIED AND I DIED!!!"]]
70* Pennywise torturing Richie over his "dirty little secret", while it can be considered BlackComedy, is also rather unsettling. Him being able to taunt Richie about his memories of ''Franchise/StreetFighter'' or about his secret implies that Pennywise can [[MindRape read your mind like a damn book]] to find what you're afraid of. He doesn't just want to kill the Losers; he wants to break them in every conceivable way.
71** Richie closes his eyes to try and reassure himself it's not real. He opens them only to find Pennywise running at him murderously while shaking and jerking about.
72** The close-up on Pennywise' face is deeply disturbing with his blood-red eyes and literally spitting out the word "secret."
73** [[SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct Bill Hader's performance alone during this sequence is very convincing, showing he is able to convey being realistically scared without being absurdly over-the-top.]]
74** During Pennywise's song, the public sings and sways with him. [[RealityWarper Pennywise is able to outright control the townspeople of Derry and bend them to his will]], whether they know it or not.
75** The way Pennywise's face ''warps'' and his voice changes as he calls for Richie to come back is terrifying.
76--->'''Pennywise:''' Come back and play! '''''[[VoiceOfTheLegion COME BACK AND PLAY WITH THE CLOWN!]]'''''
77** Right before the scene, someone gives Richie a funeral program of himself. Who might that have been, you ask? Adrian Mellon, [[FacialHorror putrid rotting face]] and all...
78** The whole scene with Richie in the park is just dripping with creepy. The daytime horror aesthetic, the surroundings turning a bizarre and vivid blue tint; and the distorted music playing as Pennywise sings his song. There's also the crowd in the background. As soon as Pennywise shows up, they immediately stop what they're doing, turn towards Richie, and just stare at him, still as statues. Then when Pennywise sings his song, they all begin swaying in unison. It feels very unnatural. While Pennywise's jokes [[NightmareRetardant may damper the scariness]], it would no doubt be horrifying to anyone in Richie's shoes.
79* Alvin Marsh is just as horrifying in this film as the last, in flashbacks. He's still calling Beverly his "little girl" in a way just oozing with {{lust}}. In one of the film's flashbacks, he ''sprays Beverly with her late mother's perfume and sniffs her''. It's clear he views Beverly as just an extension of her dead mother that he can abuse as he pleases. When Beverly slams the fingers off of a hallucination of Alvin later in the film, you can't help but cheer.
80* We see some of the shapes Pennywise took while he was terrorizing Derry's local Native American tribe, [[TimeAbyss long before the town was placed there]]. We learn that IT was the inspiration for a number of man eating mythological beasts such as the [[GiantFlyer Thunderbird]], the SkinWalker, likely werewolves, and even the {{Wendigo}}. In a truly dastardly showcase of BeenThereShapedHistory, we see that even some of America's ancient folktales were because of IT.
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