But the action of It: Chapter Two, set 27 years after the first movie, is episodic and uninvolving.  For one, the movie’s length—filled with flashbacks—feels punishing. For another, simply dumping big oozing vats of blood all over the screen at every possible moment? Gross and obvious, but not really scary. In fact, this new It works so hard to be scary that it becomes silly and laughable.

Horror flicks need grabby, relatable characters, and It: Chapter Two shouldn’t lack for those. So, this time around, we meet the Stranger Things­/Stand by Me-type “Losers Club” of Derry, Maine—the seven funky, spunky kids who fought the scary monsters in the first movie—as twitchy, shook-up grown-ups who have lived for decades in the shadow of darkness and old trauma. Trouble is, their adult selves are way less interesting and likable than they were as kids.

The moviemakers take forever to get the old gang back together, and yet, once they do, they separate them for lots of the running time. There’s Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), the only one of the old gang of outcasts to have stayed put in their leafy small town; he and his wispy storyline get sidelined pretty quickly. Semi-successful novelist-screenwriter Bill (James McAvoy) married a movie star but remains scarred by the brutal, long-ago supernatural abduction of his younger brother Georgie. Beverly (Jessica Chastain, acting all the time), a fashion designer still touched by visions and premonitions, remains a big, bruised beating heart who gets routinely brutalized by her lout of a husband. 

The handsome, slimmed-down Ben (Jay Ryan) has made a killing by hustling prime real estate, but he still longs for Bev. Richie (Bill Hader, the movie’s powerhouse, who delivers easy, throwaway humor and pathos) has parlayed his quick wit into a slash-and-burn stand-up comedy career. Jumpy, doom-laden Eddie (James Ransone) now works for an insurance company. And nerdy but ultimately surprising Stanley (Andy Bean) got happily wed.

The events of the film are ignited by an especially brutal, horrifying and gratuitous scene of a homophobic attack on a guy (played by I Killed My Mother director Xavier Dolan). It’s straight from the novel and brings back the monstrous, mocking, blood-lusting Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard, still having a ball, still terrific). This summons the cast of characters back home to face their shadows—their biggest nightmares. And they’re all as terrified as they should be. After all, we know that the big, malevolent clown doesn’t come to play, and he’s got up his sleeve a highly personal horror show lined up for each of the characters.

That’s where things go from not so hot to lousy. The set pieces—one during a group food fest, another during a visit to a childhood home and so forth—may sound fine on paper, but on screen they miss, mostly because of clunky, clumsy special effects meant to give form to the movie’s half-baked ancient curses and mumbo jumbo about dark carnivals and evil entities. If you’ve seen one shape-shifter do his thing, you’ve seen them all.

Watching one cast member after another face down their personal demons gets old quickly, and with each repetition, they get less and less scary. But you know what’s truly horrifying? Child abuse. Sexual abuse. Violence toward women. The abduction of little kids. A gay hate crime. When the movie goes to those dark places every now and then, it chills. By comparison, everything else is just old-school horror-show foolishness.