“IT”, the recent Stephen King themed movie remake, has blown down the doors of box offices, as carnivorous consumeristic vultures cannot stop pecking at this feral film, absorbing its subtle nostalgia and returning for second viewings to re-embrace the 1990 cult classic and horrific novel that features a funny clown.

Personally, I find clowns quite humorous, and I was excited to observe the cultural masterpiece redone in the modern era. After watching the film, I felt… the movie was ok. That’s it. Review over.

In all seriousness, I thought this film was extremely enjoyable, well made, and had wonderful performances by the clown and the child actors. However, all the horror fell flat on its makeup-covered clown face.

There is a common occurrence of flashy, startling jump scares in movies that involve some “being” jumping at the screen and a loud clank or scream and making the audience freak out, but lacks any actual horror. This tanks the film’s score a couple points, and makes me question this film’s very genre.

Real horror, as seen in the classics by John Carpenter’s “The Thing” or the original “Friday the 13th,” should include prolonged moments of tension building up. Real fear is the tangible ball of dark ink that wells in your soul, and grows and feels like a bright red balloon before it pops- splattering with nightmares.

I am reminded of trashy “scary movies” that feel like a studio’s calculated garbage heap, in which the movie must include a jump scare every eight minutes or they kick you out of the studio.

However, what brings this movie into a good watch is a couple of smart moves by the screenwriter and director and some good acting by the kids. We all know that the original book is a mess of spaghetti that failed to stick the wall, a bunch of broken crayons, a weirdly inappropriate, uh, scene, and a drug induced fever dream dressed in makeup and suspenders hosted on a flying turtle, (yes that is in the novel).

The original written formatting was a pile of phycid crap with some cool ideas. The movie scores as a personal victory by putting such an insane concept by King, and his cowriter, cocaine, into a visual medium that all audiences can enjoy. The film is perfect for a good, safe watch, and has a little something for everyone.

What the original 1990 movie failed in was the idea of shoving the adult’s plot into the movie, ruining the original kid’s tale and cluttering up the story. I much prefer a two-parter film, which this movie has done.

I give a solid 3.9 out of 5 stars to this crazy clown calamity, resuscitated to a good time.

This was my bi-monthly review, I hope you hated it.