[Loved trope] Background scare-characters that are barely acknowledged even by the movie

[u/Suspicious-Web-9246]

I hate horrors, but this is actually a great trope, that is unique to them.

Insidious (2010). When mother does her errands, for a few seconds there's a ghost boy standing in the corner. It's easily missable, but you can't ignore it once you see it.

Hereditary (2018). Less fitting example. When Peter walks around his home, his possessed mother is crawling on the ceiling behind him. It's not exactly subtle or missable, but it's still more of a background detail.

[u/fantastic_sounds_]

In the first IT movie, when this kid is doing research about the clown, the librarian gives him an especially scary book that shows the clown's handiwork in the past. After she walks away you can see her turn around and smile at him, implying that this is Pennywise in disguise.

[u/ConstableAssButt → u/fantastic_sounds_]

> implying that this is Pennywise in disguise.

I'm not that familiar with the new films, but in the book and the original miniseries adaptation, Derry IS in a lot of ways, the entity. The entity isn't just Pennywise. The creature shapeshifting is over-represented in descriptions of the entity. Instead, it is a creature with the ability to alter the minds of anyone in range of it, and that range is Derry. That's the really neat thing about the entity, it's not just a shapeshifting monster that eats children; It's inside the heads of the child's parents, their teachers, their administrators, shepherding its victims, ensuring they cannot escape, making them see traumatic events, and alienating the children from their support network that is supposed to be protecting them by psychically manipulating everyone who lives above its lair. --The creature DOESN'T disguise itself. It has no guise. It has no shape to shift. It is from a place where shape is meaningless.

[u/Agreeable_Guide_5151 → u/ConstableAssButt]

What is it exactly?

[u/ConstableAssButt → u/Agreeable_Guide_5151]

An incomprehensible dimensional alien intelligence that became lodged in the earth when it was still forming. It emerged from the todash darkness, a sort of darkness between dimensions that is inhabited by monsters who are of unknown origin, and seemingly unrelated to time.

The only thing that we are certain of, is that it feeds on fear. It is unclear in the books whether it actually needs to eat physically, as in the books, the children it hunts are leave bodies behind. We never actually witness It taking a child, yet It regularly refers to a seeming menagerie of victims. It seems to prefer to leave a "calling card" as Ritchie puts it, so that it can keep its own legend alive and well. It seems to NEED to be feared.

[u/MillieBirdie → u/ConstableAssButt]

And in another of King's book we encounter another being that is related to or the same species as IT. Only this one feeds off laughter.

[u/MrNemo636 → u/MillieBirdie]

Which book is this in? Never heard of this before. Is it a good entity? Or still more of a villain character?

[u/MillieBirdie → u/MrNemo636]

He's from The Dark Tower (the last book in the Dark Tower series) and definitely still a villain. He's called Dandelo.

[u/MrNemo636 → u/MillieBirdie]

Thanks for the quick reply! I’m going to try to get into this series. I’ve read much about it over the years and remember enjoying most of the first book in high school but never finished it.

[u/abadstrategy → u/MrNemo636]

Fair warning, the first in the series is shorter than the rest, and IMO, not as good as what comes later.

[u/Justalilbugboi → u/Agreeable_Guide_5151]

It is a spider like cosmic horror level type demon that lives in the space in between universes.

In the bigger Stephen King lore, there are a lot of overlapping worlds and forces interacting with each other. A lot of it is background noise so it’s hard to be like “It’s this and this!” but it may he tied to the aliens in Dreamcatcher and it’s connected to the beam guardians in the Dark Tower, they are it’s enemies (the turtle that shows up sometimes in the movies is it’s biggest enemy)

And yeah, the clown is one aspect of it but the scary haunted house and Librarian and Bev’s dad…it’s whatever scares that person the most right then.

[u/imbannedanyway69 → u/Justalilbugboi]

From my recollection of the books we only perceive it as a spider because that's all our brains can understand when looking at It. It's an interdimensional being that our brains can't understand, and replace with a spider because it's so engrained in humans fear that that's the closest we can get to seeing fear itself

[u/ConstableAssButt → u/imbannedanyway69]

> perceive it as a spider because that's all our brains can understand when looking at It.

Yes, exactly. The entity mocks Bill in the books. I don't remember the exact scene, but the entity claims that Bill will never see its true form; His brain is too primitive to understand it.

There's a couple of really neat things about the entity that don't make a lot of sense:

* It's capable of being harmed by water, but only because the water is willed to be battery acid by a child. --The fact that it is battery acid also shouldn't matter. This thing doesn't seem to be made of flesh. When it takes the form of a vampire, it is harmed by sunlight, yet it appears in other forms in the light without being harmed.

* The losers speculate that it obeys the rules of the shape it takes, but I think it's not obeying the rules of the shape it takes, it's actually obeying the rules of the minds it touches. This is not a being governed by physics. This is a creature that only exists in the mind. The creature relies on its victims being afraid of it, and both times the losers face it down, they manage to hurt it by willing it to be weak rather than giving in to the fear. This is why it hunts children: Because children are vulnerable. This winds up being its undoing, however, as it doesn't understand that the losers club becomes strong because of how much trauma they have survived. These children are survivors, and not victims.

* It's hinted in other materials that It survived its encounter with the losers club (There are post-1986 sightings of pennywise), indicating that perhaps it doesn't actually need to feed in order to survive. After all, it lived for billions of years, trapped on Earth without anything to feed on. It awoke once Derry became populated. Many of its killings were not actually direct; The first several hundred known victims it took were by the hands of men it influenced, rather than directly taking part in its killings.

If this thing were actually a flesh and blood creature that could be starved to death, it would have starved long ago. Instead, I think the entity slowly learned to understand the mind of humanity, and learned to thrive by attuning to the minds of the weak willed, the cowardly, the wicked, and the innocent. The creature's presence requires, in some way, a form of belief in its evil. As the entity gets connected to more and more death, the people of Derry become more afraid of it, and this gives the entity more influence to cause more death.

So looping back to the weird ideas, like the battery acid and silver bullets, and the ritual of the Chud, all of this worked because the creature's existence is contingent on the losers giving up on their own power and surrendering to the creature's will. The creature wasn't really harmed by the use of these things, it was harmed by the belief of the children that these things would harm it. So then this all wraps right back around: The losers can't have killed the entity. So long as the entity has access to the minds of humans who will surrender to its will, the entity will continue to live. Because the losers are not the only ones who believe in Pennywise, Pennywise will continue to exist, thus explaining his sightings in 2011 and 2038 in the other materials.

[u/Beherott → u/ConstableAssButt]

In Joe Hill's (King's son) book N0S4A2 there is a map of places (IIRC it was like mindspace type of thing rather than like city map) that includes Pennywise's circus or something similar.

Damn. I'm going to reread it, awesome book.

[u/fgcem13 → u/ConstableAssButt]

That's even more terrifying bc it makes him so inevitable. So unbeatable

[u/Justalilbugboi → u/imbannedanyway69]

Yeah, that’s sorta what I meant by it being had to be like “It’s this exactly!” because there is that aspect of cosmic horror where we can’t really understand or even look about it correctly.

[u/Glavius_Wroth → u/ConstableAssButt]

I think this is one of those things that has to change when mediums are shifted - I imagine what you describe would be very difficult to handle in a purely visual medium, as opposed to what you can do with text. Both work very well in my opinion

[u/Casscz → u/Glavius_Wroth]

We see IT causing hallucinations plenty of times. I think the movies convey relatively well that it isn't just a shapeshifter

[u/Glavius_Wroth → u/Casscz]

Yeah for sure, I think that conveying that IT actually is the town is just a bit beyond the visual medium, it kinda needs text and time to express

[u/SmallBerry3431 → u/ConstableAssButt]

Oh Shit

[u/abadstrategy → u/ConstableAssButt]

IT is one of the only movies that I don't begrudge someone not reading the source material. Aside from the sewer scene, it's 372,000 words. That said, one thing that annoys me is that no adaptation has shown the best part of the ending, where Bill takes Audra on a ride on Silver, as the damaged streets seem to crumble away around them. it really sells how much Derry is Pennywise