Effective blend of emotional content, dark humor, and freaky material

Rating: 9/10 (9 September 2017)

Blew away my expectations in a great way. I've never left the theater feeling this way about a horror movie. It was able to blend disturbing elements, dark humor, and creepy material almost seamlessly and it never did so without purpose for the story.
There were moments where I felt the scene only happened for the sake of making a scare, but the plot made its connections effectively.
The movie had a lot of genuinely amusing dialogue in it, which is what made it funny at times. The cast was fantastic and the characters were very well-developed and enjoyable; a rare element for films of this theme.
There were hair-raising moments of terror in the film as well as a few uniquely effective old-school jumps scares, and these moments were spread throughout the film evenly.
The character-driven narrative was easily one of the best I've scene in the genre and was fairly emotional at times.
Overall it played as a fun and focused horror film with laughing, crying and screaming mixed together nicely. I highly recommend this movie if you can handle kids swearing and dying, excessive gore, and clowns with other freaky images.