Pennywise Explained: What Exactly Is Stephen King’s IT?

After this experience, the kids come to the realization that they'll likely go their separate ways as they get older, but they know no one will possibly ever be able to relate to them like they relate to each other due to the bond they now share. In the first film, after realizing the importance of what they've just gone through, Bill (Stan in the book) suggests the Losers make a blood oath to swear that if Pennywise ever returns to Derry, they'll return to defeat It again. He finds a piece of broken glass, cuts each of their palms, and then they all stand in a circle and hold hands. Weeks later, after Beverly confronts and incapacitates her sexually abusive father, Pennywise abducts her. The Losers Club reassembles and returns to the abandoned house to rescue her. Bowers, who has murdered his abusive father after being driven insane by Pennywise, attacks the group; Mike fights back, pushing Bowers down the well.

Fun with casting

What is the movie It about?

The Losers swear a blood oath that they will return to Derry as adults if Pennywise returns. After the others make their goodbyes and disperse, Beverly and Bill discuss her leaving the next day to live with her aunt in Portland. In October 1988, twelve-year-old Bill Denbrough makes a paper sailboat for Georgie, his six-year-old brother. Georgie sails the boat along the rainy streets of small town Derry, Maine, only to have it fall down a storm drain. As he attempts to retrieve it, Georgie sees a clown in the drain, who introduces himself as "Pennywise the Dancing Clown".

For Richie, it's unlikely that there would be lingering fallout from seeing the deadlights like there was for Beverly since its influence seems to dissipate at the end of Chapter Two, allowing the Losers to remember each other this time. It involves Pennywise using Beverly's abusive husband Tom to kidnap Bill's wife Audra, which lures the Losers to its lair (except for Mike, who remains hospitalized after Henry's attack on him). The Losers are able to defeat It using the Ritual of Chüd, but after doing so, a massive storm destroys the town of Derry. The Losers again go their separate ways, and they collectively start to forget what happened to them once again.

A love triangle

As the only girl in the movie, she anchors the boys and gives an amazing performance.The kids nail the comedy in this movie, especially Wolfhard, who uses very crude humor throughout. The comedy in this movie only creates more attachment to the kids.Now, the horror.Pennywise, played by Bill Skarsgard, is terrifying. The movie wastes no time on introducing his sinisterness.From the very first scene, this movie went places I did not expect. I wanted to be unsettled by him.I wanted to have trouble sleeping the night I saw it, and I did not. I think this is because with the protagonists being a group of kids, you can only go so dark.As I said earlier, this movie does go to some places you do not expect, and there are some very dark elements throughout the movie. However, I do wish I had left the theater feeling more unsettled than I did.Other than that, there is not much I can fault this movie for.

Henry then runs off to attack Mike in the library, but he is killed by Richie before he has a chance to really hurt Mike. The Losers do indeed head to the sewers for a final confrontation with Pennywise, but they do so together as a group. The filmmakers' decision to alter the story and put the lone female Loser in a situation where she needed to be saved led to criticism, with some accusing the film of perpetuating a damsel in distress trope when the source material had no such issue. But then again, there is at least one aspect of the book that pretty much everyone is glad didn't make it into the movie. The story of It picks up in 1988 (bumped up from 1958 in the novel) when 7-year-old Georgie Denbrough ventures out into a rainstorm to play with a paper sailboat that his older brother Bill made for him.

Is Henry really dead?

No one in Derry knows what happened to Georgie, and the town eventually moves on, assuming that he simply drowned. Bill, however, becomes movie guide determined to find out what happened to his brother.

At the end of the film, Richie revisits a secret "R+E" carving he made as a child and re-carves it, showing that he had loved Eddie since they were children. Although Richie's sexuality isn't explicitly addressed in the book, some believe it was hinted. During her capture, Beverly is rendered comatose after viewing It's Deadlights. She is awoken by a kiss from Ben, and the Losers are then able to defeat Pennywise by proving they're not afraid of it. They hurl insults at It and physically attack it, causing It to retreat to an early hibernation.

With that in mind, the Losers try to force SpiderCrabPennywse into a smaller physical form, but when that plan fails, they realize they can make It feel small, draining It of Its power by taunting It with Its weaknesses. When Pennywise shrings down to the roughly the size of a giant baby, Mike reaches into Its chest and pulls out Its heart, which the Losers crush in their hands. In Chapter Two, Mike is the man with the intel, the only Loser who stayed in Derry and kept his memory, and who spent the last 27 years digging into Its mythology. Mike's research leads him to a Native American tribe that live outside the Derry town limits -- outside of Its reach -- and there, he has a vision of It arriving on earth, falling from the sky and crashing into the Earth's ground in the land that would become Derry. In that vision, we also glimpse the Ritual of Chüd, which is said to defeat the creature.

Looking in the drain, Georgie encounters a clown who introduces himself as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Georgie, despite knowing he should not talk to strangers, is enticed by Pennywise to reach into the drain and retrieve his boat. Muschietti's It was released in September 2017 and It Chapter Two was released in September 2019. So grab a blanket, grab your cocoa, grab a snuggly person or pet or just your warmest sweater, and enjoy some of the standard and not-so-standard offerings of the holiday season. If you want to see more TV movies from the high-volume producers, you can find the Hallmark ones here, the Lifetime ones here, the UPTV ones here, the BET ones here, and the "faith-based" Great American Family ones here.

Every member of the gang that comes to call themselves the Losers’ Club is natural and charismatic, especially the luminous Lillis as Beverly, the only girl in the group, and Wolfhard, whose wisecracking Richie easily walks away with the movie. Their ensemble scenes display the same sort of easy camaraderie that made Stranger Things (which also stars Wolfhard, and was heavily influenced by the original It) such a hit for Netflix last summer. Sure, the movie’s R rating allows Muschietti to get gorier than the 1990 It—but more importantly, it gives the kids the freedom to say “fuck,” not gratuitously but with a studied nonchalance familiar to anyone who’s ever been 13. Despite the many terrifying moments they endure in their quest—scenes that will leave you trembling and giggling at once—"It" is even more powerful in the warm, easy camaraderie between its young stars.

It feasts on the flesh of humans simply because our fears are easy to manifest and they make us taste better. According to It, when humans got scared, "all the chemicals of fear flooded the body and salted the meat". This is why he prefers to feast on children -- their fears are simple, pure, and powerful compared to the complex, pathological fears of adults.

Because Muschietti’s “It” isalmost entirely about monsters—it doesn’t take the time to make Derryfeel like a real place with a dark, hidden, unsettlingly Americanhistory—the movie lacks the novel’s sense of ethical, even political,purpose. The one exception is its treatment of Mr. Marsh, Beverly’screepy, abusive dad, played by Stephen Bogaert. Toward theend of the movie, Pennywise assumes his shape and asks Beverly, “Are youstill my little girl? ” The holy rage with which she screams andrebels—she rams what looks like a piece of rebar down histhroat—expresses the novel’s cathartic, indignant ire. King’s novel ends on a psychedelicnote because bravery and rage aren’t enough to defeat It; what’s reallyneeded is imagination. It (titled onscreen as It Chapter One) is a 2017 American supernatural horror film directed by Andy Muschietti and written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman.