This post contains minor spoilers for It.
Between the new movie adaptation of It and the return of Twisty to American Horror Story, clowns are having a moment again, as are the people who remain silent about clowns all year long but suddenly develop a phobia as soon as they see Pennywise on television. I don’t mean people who had a bad experience with a clown as a child or something — those people can keep complaining. I’m talking about people who think the It trailer is the scariest thing they’ve ever seen in their lives just because someone told them clowns are scary and they believed it. Are you really scared of clowns? Or are you just scared of that clown, who very obviously wouldn’t be welcome at a child’s birthday party?
Having now seen It, I am here to tell you that you’re all a bunch of liars or wimps, because the scariest part of It is not Pennywise. It’s also not the house on Neibolt Street, or the leper, or the hands coming out of that door, or prepubescent boys competing for the attention of the lone girl in their midst. Nope. None of those things. It’s Georgie, the cute little boy who goes down the drain in the first few minutes of the movie.
"But he’s just a little boy!" you say. No. Georgie is creepy. There’s definitely something unsettling about a kid who sees Pennywise’s face staring back at him from a storm drain and thinks, That guy looks like a friend, I should definitely talk to him. Look at this face! That is a murder face if I’ve ever seen one! Leave your homemade paper boat behind and go make a new one.
It’s not that I’m upset about Pennywise as an entity, it’s that I’m upset about his location. You shouldn’t talk to anybody you meet in a fucking storm drain. You could replace Pennywise with the cutest child actor you can think of — that little boy from Lion, maybe — but if he gave you a maniacal grin like that while peering out of a sewer you’d be like, “Oh hell no, I’m getting the fuck out of here.” Outside of the storm drain, Pennywise is just a dumb clown with too much lip filler.
But back to Georgie. Georgie — spoiler alert — dies almost immediately. When he appears again throughout the movie, he’s really just a manifestation of It in Georgie form. Doubters will say that this means any fear caused by Georgie is really caused by Pennywise’s manipulation of his image but that’s not really true. The other It manifestations — Eddie’s leper, Ben’s headless explosion guy, Stanley’s painting, etc. — are distinctly horrifying monsters, but when Bill sees Georgie, his little brother looks exactly as he did the day he died. You could argue that this is because Bill’s greatest fear is finding out that Georgie is still alive and all alone, but I want to believe it’s because Georgie on his own is scary enough. Here he is hiding in a corner, grinning like a little maniac:
That’s just how Georgie looks, people. Pennywise had nothing to do with this. There's another scene where he runs through the kitchen and draws Bill down into the basement. Again, this is just a Georgie projection but it's also how Georgie really moved when he was alive — his little scampering run is the same as it was when he was running down the street chasing the boat. And oh my god, that giggle! It was far more chilling than any twisted carnival music or Pennywise's guttural laughs, which honestly just reminded me of Krusty the Clown. Georgie looks kind of cute here:
But nope! Because then Pennywise takes over and Georgie starts screaming, "You’ll float too!" Until the very last second when his face turns gray and his eyes go crazy, Georgie still looks like Georgie, so don’t even try to blame Pennywise for this mess. Georgie had the face of a child who would kill you in your sleep and eat your brains as a snack before Pennywise ever got involved.
Stephen King books and their corresponding film adaptations have a long history of creepy kids. Think of Danny in The Shining, screaming “redrum” at the top of his lungs. That is 1 billion times scarier than anything else in that movie. The blood elevator? Please. That’s obviously corn syrup. The lady in the bathtub? Gross but not scary. In Firestarter, a child is literally the fire-starter of the title, and in Pet Sematary, a kid slashes his neighbor's Achilles tendon with a scalpel. Sorry, Pennywise, but you’re gonna have to do better than making a slide projector turn on its own.
So in conclusion, clowns = fine, kids = bad. But I’m still glad I don’t live in Derry.
