This fall’s “It” was a huge success at the box office, raking in an impressive $305,250,480 in the domestic market by October 13; nearly triple that of the highest grossing horror movie last year, The Conjuring Two: The Enfield Poltergeist.* The film also boasts rave reviews on popular sites like Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert and The Guardian. But why? The answer varies from person to person, but a common thread shows up among the students of LSHS who were far from immune to the hyped up horror flick’s draw.

The film, of course, interested the traditional horror fans like junior Kathryn Orbino.

“I don’t like the blood and guts, I kind of like a film that connects to you on a personal level, you can relate to it, behavior wise or like emotionally,” Orbino said.

This film fulfilled her criteria. She was especially happy with the portrayal of Annette O’Toole’s character, Beverly, and her growth throughout the film. Her favorite part of the film was when “Beverly’s father kind of like yells at her and starts berating her over like the stupidest thing… she kind of fights against him and hits him on the head,” Orbino said.  

Junior Sierra Tucker was pleasantly surprised by the movie. “I originally wasn’t going to see it because I don’t like horror movies. But my best friend was going to go see it, and he didn’t want to go by himself, and we ended up going in a big group and watching it, and I actually enjoyed it”.  

According to Tucker the movie is about “this clown that comes into town every 27 years to feed on the fear of children, and he’s pretty freaky and there’s a bunch of kids in the town that call themselves “The Losers” and he tries to get their fear and they’re like nah”.  

The movie was more of a comedy for Tucker who thought a fair amount of the scares in the movie crossed the line from terrifying to ridiculous.

“My favorite scene of the whole entire movie is towards the end where they’re in the sewers and the main girl is in there because she got captured by Pennywise [the clown], and he opens up this carnival door and it’s him, it’s Pennywise, dancing but his head’s not moving, only his body is moving. And it’s really weird and it feels really out of place, but I was laughing so hard,” Tucker said.

Senior Thomas Petruzzo didn’t think the movie was all that scary either, giving it a 4 out of 10 on the scariness scale. Luckily, the other aspects of the movie made up for its lack of terror.

“I just liked the kids hanging out. I liked more of the story than the horror stuff,” said Petruzzo. For this reason, Petruzzo described the movie more as just a story with some jump-scares rather than a thriller.

“If you’re a big fan of horror I wouldn’t watch it, but if you just want something to eat popcorn to [I would recommend it]” Petruzzo said.

In a survey of roughly 130 students at LSHS, 73 students had seen the movie “It”, and of these, 69 reported liking the movie. The comment that seems to show up again and again, and which may be the key to the movie’s success is that “It” taken without the horror, without the jump scares, graphics and gore, the movie still holds up. In other words, “It” isn’t a horror flick, it’s a movie that includes horror. The movie takes time to develop its characters and actually tell a story the audience is interested in, helping it reach a much larger audience. The fact that its main villain has some crazy dance skills helps as well.

*the-numbers.com