Horror movies are making a big splash at theaters, most of them before Halloween — with classic titles getting revisited, new ideas being tried and familiar tropes trotted out in new forms.
Horror, said Mike Hardle, founder of Salt Lake City’s Halloween-weekend convention Fear Con, “is a very pure form of entertainment. It kind of appeals to your basic, primal instincts, like survival.”
The emergence of “It” — based on King’s 1986 novel, which spawned a 1990 TV miniseries — is part of “a throwback to the ’80s,” Hardle said.