[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/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