Watch It!
Are you fond of clowns? Clowns are supposed to be fun and exciting characters! They host birthday parties, they make balloon animals, and they make funny antics and corny jokes! Kids love clowns! They are the staple of fun and games! But do people really like clowns? If you ask around, I think many kids would say that they don’t really like clowns. Ask parents and they will tell you that their kids and babies almost always cry when clowns are around. I’m over 30 years old and I think clowns freak me out! Do you know why? I think most of the fear and the discomfort of clowns came from the ‘IT’!
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Everybody knows that Stephen King is a master novelist and a legendary storyteller. He has tons of award-winning and blockbuster stories under his belt such as The Shining, Carrie, The Green Mile, The Mist, Dreamcatcher, and even the recently released film The Dark Tower starring Idris Elba and Matthew Mcconaughey. But maybe one of the most terrifying things that stayed in the minds of everybody throughout this year’s is Stephen King’s abomination of the clown…in his horror story It! The story revolved around an evil creature that lures children and takes them away. In a small American town, children start to disappear as this clown-like figure lurks in the shadows and steals these young children into the darkness. A mini-series was released in the 90’s and for the first time, Stephen King’s evil creation was brought to our screens and clowns were never seen the same way again!
It Still Haunts Us
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This year, Stephen King’s creature returns in the 2017 rendition of ‘IT!” Pennywise the clown returns as the shape-shifting demon who terrorizes a small town in search of children to ensnare! Why would a remake of the original mini-series be made today? Because now, with all the technology and all the shows that inflict horror through the screen, it becomes ten times more terrifying now than it did almost twenty years ago!
A Small Town and a Couple of Kids
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Don’t you realize that these big horror movies almost always start out at a small, nondescript town? Where are the horror films in Manhattan or London or Paris? Big cities mean lots of lights and lots of people, and you cannot always make that environment or setting as scary as you could a small town! Small houses on empty streets. Busted lampposts on dark roads. Withering trees on grassy paths. These small towns are sparse on people with a hundred places where dark and terrible things can hide in! take the success of the Netflix show Stranger Things for example. A rural town becomes the setting for a mysterious disappearance. It was effective! And you know what else the two stories have in common? Kids!
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A group of kids also start to discover this eerie and terrifying phenomenon and sets out to uncover its secrets. Why are kids so effective in telling a horror story? Because initially, kids are young and helpless! It would not be the same movie if we have a Hollywood hunk with a sword and a gatling gun roaming the streets of small town! Imagine Chris Hemsworth being chased by a clown as he runs frantic and afraid. Not scary right? But kids…kids are all of us. They show the innocence and fear that all of us have inside of all things dark and dangerous. And kids are the best victim of the dark transformation of a clown.
Children are supposed to be the friend of clowns. They are funny and friendly and delightful. They are the source of magic and fantasy and fun! That’s half the reason why kids go to the circus, to watch the clowns make fun of each other! But Stephen King twisted the idea of the clown and made it the public enemy number one of children everywhere by making the clown an evil and monstrous creature out to snuff the children!
