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Stephen King’s ‘It’: Terrifying Stills Reveal Pennywise Is Up To Some New Tricks

By Dustin Kemp
Published on: 20:41 PST, Mar 27, 2017

A few new photos from the upcoming movie adaptation of Stephen King’s It have been released, and they very well may be the most tantalizing ones yet. One of them in specific is hailed by most as absolutely terrifying and true to Stephen King’s vision, and another reveals Pennywise the Clown will be getting creative with the forms it takes during the film.

Pretty much everyone with an internet connection knows by now that Warner Bros. is currently adapting Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel It to the silver screen, and the production has attained a gigantic following across the web. This is undoubtedly thanks in part to a fantastic PR campaign by the people behind the film, but part of the movie’s preemptive popularity can be credited to the iconic 1990 TV miniseries adaptation of the Stephen King tale. An amazing number of people remember simultaneously enjoying and being traumatized by the miniseries, and the fond memories are almost certainly a big part of why the new adaptation is so popular.

Whether or not one liked the miniseries as much as most, though, it is objectively true that it left out a great number of the details in Stephen King’s original book, which is over 1,100 pages long. One of those details is that Pennywise is a shape-shifting monster. Its clown form is the only one featured in the movie, and it can even be seen as its “default” form in King’s work, but it is actually only one of many different forms it can take.

The new photos, which were first shown off in a USA Today story, contain one image of Pennywise terrorizing Stephen King’s “Losers Club” (the name given to the main group of protagonists in It) in one of its alternate forms. It looks pretty creepy, and it verifies an important fact about the upcoming Stephen King-inspired flick.

Just seeing that Pennywise will show up in different forms is huge news in itself. Many Stephen King fans and movie buffs had already assumed Pennywise would probably be returning to his shape-shifting roots because the film is so big-budget and because, as Inquisitr reported previously, marketing materials seem to suggest it will be sticking to the groundwork Stephen King’s book laid out more than the miniseries did. Still, though, it is one thing to assume something, and quite another to have it confirmed with an actual image.

The image also helps to reassure audiences that, in true Stephen King fashion, the movie will not be pulling punches. The photo shows Pennywise walking towards the children, palms splayed open. Those who have read the book may recognize the image as being taken from the scene in which Pennywise transforms into a werewolf inside the house on Neibolt Street. In any case, the children look absolutely terrified, and it is great to see that no overblown CGI is being used to elicit that reaction. Just pure, unadulterated horror, as Stephen King intended.

And speaking of nightmare fuel, another image introduced in the article is being called even scarier. The picture is pretty simple. In the bottom third of the frame, the outfit Pennywise wears in its clown form and the bottom of the creature’s face can be seen. Most of its face, though, is covered by a big red balloon.

“Holy s**t that balloon one looks so scary! Hype!” wrote Reddit user MotherOfCattleDogs on the dedicated Stephen King fan subreddit.

Others commented the image is not just eerie, but actually very aesthetically pleasing, something that bodes very well for the rest of the movie.

“The image of Pennywise is quite beautiful,” wrote Sgreen88.

“The stark red/white color scheme in the balloon picture looks fantastic,” added Frank-Grimey-Grimes.

The last of the new images shows the Losers Club gathered around a projector, a scene not contained in Stephen King’s novel but that was revealed to be included in the still-unreleased trailer for the film when, as Bloody Disgusting reports, a select group saw it at SXSW. That group absolutely loved the trailer, by the way.

All in all, reception of the three shots among the Stephen King fan community has been overwhelmingly positive.

“These three pictures have more atmosphere in them than the entire 3 hours of the miniseries,” notes Reddit user Bobb_Grayy.

The fact that all three of these stills seem to match up to the supposed contents of the trailer only reinforces the theory that the trailer will drop for public consumption later this week.

What do you think of the new stills? Are they really that good? Stephen King fan or not, make yourself heard in the comments section below!

[Featured Image by Cris Vector/Deviant Art]

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