The film is a nice update to the original. It includes a lot more crazy CGI imagery that the original, new technology allowing ever more spectacle. It also mixes the supernatural horror with more mundane trials. One subplot, involves a poor teenage girl trying to survive life and puberty with her creepy, controlling father. Literal fountains of blood provide some very on-the--nose symbolism.
The first part of the film is very straightforward scary-movie. The film falters a little bit trying to adapt exactly Stephen King's words. A leper, for example, is more pathetic than scary in real life. The second part just throws in the towel and embraces the humor full-bore, undercutting many otherwise scary scenes with one-liners or, in one infamous scene, with Juice Newton's Angel of the Morning. It's a frustrating and immersion-breaking admission that, yes, the idea of a murderous shape-shifting clown is absurd.
There's also been a lot of writing about the scene where a bunch of small-town hicks beat up/murder a gay couple. That's very unpleasant to watch and was initially supposed to kind of set the tone for the kind of town this really is: bucolic on the surface, but only because folks close their ears and turn a blind eye. This sort of small-town denial of reality and compartmentalization is almost a bending of reality in itself.
So okay, the film is good and entertaining, however it makes some very strange choices with regards the humor/horror balance in the second part. The first part is another Stranger Things-enabled nostalgia trip, but there are worse things to kill time with. As I say, a good film in the end. Worth it for the crazy visuals.
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