EIGHTH GRADE (15)

IN AN early scene of director Andy Muschietti’s over-long return to the highest-grossing horror film of all time, an emotionally crippled character – a novelist turned screenwriter – becomes the butt of a running joke about his inability to write a satisfying ending.

Stephen King, who cameos in the sequel as the proprietor of a musty antiques store, weathered similar criticism for the resolution to his 1986 book, It.

Screenwriter Gary Dauberman doesn’t stray far from the well-trodden path of the source text and condemns It Chapter Two to a fantastical final flourish that will come as a relief to audiences who have slogged through more than two-and-a-half hours of on-screen calamity.

The opening sequence – a brutal and unflinching hate crime – is the stuff of modernday nightmares and sends a shudder of fear down the spine that ripples deliciously as grown-up incarnations of the characters are drawn back to the fictional town of Derry in Maine.

Sins of the past echo cruelly in the present for one victim of domestic violence and a

diabolical predator preys on a little girl’s insecurities about her looks with scalpel-like precision.

Once the reluctant heroes divide to conquer their fears, tension dissipates and the running time becomes a genuine test of endurance COMING-OF-AGE comedy drama. Thirteenyear-old Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) is in the final stretch at Miles Grove Middle School, standing on the precipice of a more formidable challenge – high school. Kayla receives an invitation to a pool party thrown by classmate Kennedy Graves (Catherine Oliviere). Kayla hopes to bump into unrequited crush Aiden (Luke Prael), while she is oblivious to attention from Kennedy’s cousin Gabe (Jake Ryan). Soon after, Kayla meets her high school mentor Olivia (Emily Robinson), who introduces the eighth grader to older friends including Riley (Daniel Zolghadri).

■ Download/stream from September 9 and available from September 23 on Blu-ray.

Elsie Fisher as Kayla