Is Stephen King still down to clown?

After lousy adaptations of his “Dark Tower” and “Pet Sematary” novels, it seemed that the prolific horror honcho had been dethroned at the movies. But don’t fret — well, actually, do fret — because “It: Chapter Two” is King’s silver-screen seance.

Kicking off the fall, “Chapter Two” handily outdoes most of this year’s major summer blockbusters such as “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” and “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” Unlike those, the sequel to the 2017 mega-hit “It” is an immensely satisfying, often thrilling adventure film.

What it’s not is very scary. Speaking as somebody who’s afraid of spoiled milk, I was not unnerved by anything other than Bill Skarsgård’s still-freaky Pennywise the Clown. You get “Stranger Things”-style spooks here, and that’s just fine.

The story is set 27 years after the events in Derry, Maine, when a scrappy group of kids, dubbed “The Losers Club,” did battle with a demonic clown — the human embodiment of fear — who went on a killing spree.

Now adults leading mostly successful lives in big cities, they’re called back home by their pal Mike (Isaiah Mustafa), a Derry townie, when Pennywise strikes again. None of them can recall the specific trauma of their teen years, and in one of the best scenes, memories bubble up at a Chinese restaurant.

They’ve since moved on to impressive gigs. The heroic Bill (James McAvoy) is a best-selling author, and Ben (Jay Ryan) works as a high-profile architect. Richie, smartly, becomes a stand-up comedian, which allows Bill Hader to rattle off jokes and have his comic relief make dramatic sense.

Even if they don’t remember the past, they’re all still running from what happened, and their daily lives are clouded by pain. Beverly (Jessica Chastain) has found herself miserable in an abusive marriage in New York. Wanting to spare the local kids their hardship, the grown-up Losers vow to destroy Pennywise for good.

The adults of “Chapter Two” are very well-cast, which is a tall order after the exceptional kids of the first film. Hader is hilarious, and McAvoy’s big eyes are pools of torment. The whole group clicks as well as their young counterparts. That said, I miss those little punks. They pop up here and there in flashbacks, but it’s not the same as having innocent kids defeat the bad guy as they come of age. That’s a more gripping story than adults who need therapy.

“Chapter Two” also falls short when it tries too hard to be a regular old horror flick. Director Andy Muschietti has greatly upped the creature quota, for example, and just about everybody has a run-in with some sort of zombie thing that’s a dead ringer for Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings.”

Some King stories petrify with haunting imagery (“The Shining”), and others with supernatural perils (“Pet Sematary”). “It,” on the other hand, is psychological. Returning to your hometown is more terrifying than any CGI corpse. The film succeeds when it embraces that.

Still, “It: Chapter Two” is a very fine follow-up to the most successful horror film ever. It’s a series that taught us an important lesson: Skarsgårds can be more than hot and tall — they can also be serial-killer Krustys.