IT has taken the world by storm, appearing in nearly every facet of social media for
its promotion.
And given the numerous box office records it broke in its opening weekend, it's safe
to say that the production’s advertising efforts paid off.
With the sheer difference in attention it has received for a horror film, I think we
can trust that people find clowns intriguing.
But the film’s success isn’t what we’ll be exploring this time.
I think what people find most refreshing about this film is how different it is to the original
90s miniseries.
And given that they’re from completely different times, I don’t think it’s fair to compare
the two.
However, I must say that the new adaptation of IT did have a lot of very creative scenes
that made great use of Pennywise’s character and his relation to each member of The Loser’s
Club.
It used scares more adapted to a modern time period with relatable scenarios, especially
with regards to certain pieces of technology.
The creature known as IT is a shapeshifter.
It feeds on fear and uses this shape shifting ability to its advantage appearing to each
member of the Losers Club as their own personal demon to draw out that fear.
So in today’s Darkology, we’ll be exploring each character’s interaction with IT and
what psychological fears they play into; just what it is about these scenes that makes them
so scary.
Before we begin, I'd like to point out that this video will delve into several specific
phobias recognized by the internet.
This does not mean that they should be self-diagnosed if their symptoms happen to match up with
your experiences.
If you feel that you suffer from a disorder, you should seek a psychiatric professional.
As you might have guessed, this video will contain spoilers from 2017’s IT.
Today, we talk about Mike, Stan, and Ben.
Mike
When we’re introduced to Mike, he’s being asked to put down an animal at his grandfather’s
farm.
Boltgun in hand, he is sweating, unable to pull the trigger.
Frustrated, his grandfather takes the gun and shoots the sheep himself.
That Mike can’t bring himself to kill shows how gentle and rather innocent he is.
His grandpa tells him “You need to start taking more responsibility around here.
There are two places you can be in this world: you can be out here like us, or you can be
in there like them.
You waste time, hemming and hawing, and someone else is gonna make that choice for you- except
you won’t know it until you feel that bolt between your eyes”, a thought that can be
converted into the fight or flight response: a physiological reaction that occurs in response
to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival.
In the case of farm slaughter, this threat to survival might be a buyer not receiving
their product, and Mike’s family not having something to eat that night.
His apprehension in the face of a tough decision is a personal weakness he must deal with.
We later cut to Mike riding his bike into town.
He’s to make a delivery to the local butcher shop.
After parking his bike, he begins to unload when he notices Henry Bowers, the local bully
and his friends driving in his direction.
In a moment of a perceived threat to his survival, he instinctively decides to run into the nearby
alleyway and hide behind some boxes.
The creature known as IT exists to devour, and it relishes the taste of fear most.
It can be speculated that this immediate sensation of fear Mike experiences is what catches IT’s
attention and draws Pennywise out to harass him.
Bowers’ gang drives past and relieved, Mike walks his bike over to the backdoor of the
meatshop to make his delivery there where he won’t be seen.
Mike is startled when burnt hands start clawing out from behind backdoor, whispering his name
and screaming for help.
He stares at it in awe, cautiously walking closer to it- possibly because he’s reminded
of the house fire his parents died in (an altered fact from the book), something he
might feel guilt over since he survived.
Is he seeing a vision of the Blackspot incident of ‘62?
Is he seeing a vision of his parents?
Or are new people dying in front of him now?
He slightly extends his arms out and it’s clear that he wants to help but is also scared
for his own safety.
He motions towards the door but backs away again, clearly struggling with the dilemma
of whether to help or not.
Once again, the choice is taken out of his hands when the screams suddenly stop and the
door swings open, where he sees Pennywise hanging from a meat hook in the shop’s freezer,
laughing maniacally at his trauma.
He starts to slowly back away with one foot behind the other.
It’s only then, when he sees the obscured outline of the clown waving at him with horrible
glowing eyes, that he’s completely frozen in his tracks, petrified with fear.
He’s faced with yet another dilemma:
The strange monster in the meat locker sees him and instead of running, or taking action,
he just stares at Pennywise in horror.
Because of this, he’s nearly caught off guard when Bowers and his gang suddenly zoom
down the alleyway and nearly run him over.
Thankfully, the loud engine breaks his focus from Pennywise and he’s able to jump out
of the way in time.
This goes back to what his grandfather had said to him earlier- and due to his apprehension
he was almost killed.
Mike’s situation is relatable; we’ve all been faced with difficult, high-pressure decisions-
especially the dilemma of facing your fears head on.
And afterwards, we sometimes wonder if we made the right decision.
Mike in this version doesn’t know how it would have turned out had he tried to help
his parents.
All he knows is that the last memory he has of his parents is how they tried to reach
him during the fire, pushing and pounding on the door, trying to escape in vain.
He is traumatized from the vision of their skin having melted down to the bone.
What makes this scene chilling are the screams of the people burning, and how this is something
that the gentle Mike experienced for real, in the deaths of his parents.
They didn't just die.
They suffered violently.
So what fears does Mike represent?
Mike represents the fear of responsibility.
The internet term for this is called hypengyophobia.
It’s theorized to originate from a real-life trauma that involved responsibility- and goes
on to consistently affect the individual in any other events that are associated with
assuming responsibility.
It’s described that a hypengyophobic person can experience anxiety and emotional turmoil
that’s completely disruptive to their skill to function- a crippling nervousness.
In Mike’s case, this trauma would have been when his parents were killed in a fire and
his inability to do anything about it.
Mike also represents the fear of fire or pyrophobia due to the very same traumatic experience.
When put in a situation involving a vision of people in a burning building, all he could
do was watch in horror.
Stan
When we see Stan first encounter IT, he’s been told to put away a book in his father’s
office.
Stan’s fear comes in the form of a creepy painting of a crooked woman holding a flute
in that room.
From the way Stan immediately shields the left side of his face from peripheral vision
upon entering the room, it’s clear that this is something Stan is already aware of
and deeply afraid of.
This is something many of us have done.
Growing up, we've all had objects in our homes that frightened us as children.
It’s a very relatable albeit irrational fear.
What movies like IT do is show us that they're not so irrational.
Take the clown doll from Poltergeist for example.
Stan slowly turns toward the painting and notices that its slightly crooked.
He goes to straighten it, perhaps to make it seem less creepy.
He turns his back to it and it falls to the floor with a loud thud, causing his shoulders
to jolt up in surprise.
At this point, he’s already unsettled not only because he dislikes the painting, but
because his father’s office is very dimly lit, leaving pockets of shadow and uncertainty
everywhere.
Despite this, he takes a calm breath and walks over to it, almost as if telling himself that
there’s nothing to fear.
That it's all just his imagination.
This is something a lot of us have experienced as well- that denial in the face of unexplainable
happenings and an ominous presence.
Placing the portrait back up, he’s shocked to see that the woman is no longer in the
painting, and at that moment, the sound of a flute is heard playing from somewhere in
the room.
He stares at the door as he hears the sound of the flute drop to the floor behind him.
He turns around to see the twisted woman from the portrait appear from the shadows, bearing
her sharp teeth in a crooked and sinister smile.
He flees in sheer screaming terror, shutting the door behind him.
What makes this scene work so well is how it plays on several fears.
First we have the woman in the portrait.
Portraits in general can often be seen as creepy because a lot of them are drawn with
those eyes that follow you no matter where you're standing.
This plays on the fear of being stared at or scopophobia.
On top of that, the woman is twisted in an almost uncanny way- like it isn't just a portrait
of a regular human being, but something more.
In a Q&A Director Andy Muschietti mentioned that the inspiration for the woman in the
painting came from the work of Amedeo Modigliani.
Muschietti added that the villain in his previous film, Mama was also inspired from these paintings.
And when we look at Modigliani’s work, it’s easy to see why.
There’s a haunting, uncanny element about them.
The fact that it takes places inside a synagogue, a place of spiritual worship might also place
one in the mindset of a person with phasmophobia, the fear of ghosts or spirits.
Churches are generally places that most people don't prefer to be in alone.
Then we finally have nyctophobia, the fear of darkness.
It's a fear that stems from the brain’s disfigured perception of what would, or could
happen in a dark environment.
Fear of the dark can also take hold if the mind is unsteady, scared about recent events
or ideas, or perceives a threat.
Now it’s not necessarily the case that Stan suffers from any of these as he’s clearly
able to manage putting the book back and even fixing the portrait’s placement twice.
However the scene does toy with these fears.
And as with the case of nyctophobia, what could be watching you from the dark, waiting
to strike.
Ben
During Ben’s first encounter with IT, we find him reading about Derry’s history at
the town library, where he spends his free time.
When one of the librarians asks him if he has any friends, he rolls his eyes in annoyance.
It’s implied that since he doesn’t have any friends coupled with how the town bully
has targeted him, this is his safe space, where he can read in peace.
Two things come to mind when looking at his character’s struggles.
The first is gelotophobia: the fear of being laughed at- a social anxiety that can have
associations with being bullied.
The second is monophobia: the fear of being alone or isolated.
Now again- I wouldn’t necessarily go as far as to say Ben suffers from either of these
phobias as he seems to function pretty typically.
It’s more so that he represents these issues, being the new kid on the block.
And what’s scary about this scene is that it takes place in a “safe space”.
Flipping through the pages of “A History of Old Derry”, he sees various photos taken
of the town, where in one of them a boy is staring back at the camera playfully.
He soon learns of an Easter event where an explosion killed 88 children and 14 adults
and as he continues to flip through the pages, we notice one of the old librarians standing
behind him in the distance, just out of focus, hunched over and smiling sinisterly.
People typically smile in response to something that makes them happy.
There's something creepy about a misplaced smile.
It's got an insidious nature to it.
Ben doesn't see it.
But we, the viewers do.
And it's very unsettling.
What’s brilliant about the subtlety of this scene in the background is it's never really
explained.
A few cuts later, she's back to organizing books in the back.
Was this just another one of IT’s forms?
Was the old librarian a creep?
It's the uncertainty that messes with you.
Ben comes upon a photo of a tree, taken at the site of the explosion.
The subsequent pages are of the same image, only they are increasingly closer to the tree.
With each turn of the page, the tension for what might come next rises.
He begins to frantically page through what has now become a creepy flip book animation
until at last, he flips to an extreme close up of one of the tree’s branches where upon
rests the disembodied head of the boy he saw earlier.
The way the scene is presented, it’s almost like a bad omen.
A person might think they were hallucinating.
He slams the book closed then notices a red balloon floating into the room behind him.
Following it, he sees a burnt easter egg standing upright on the floor and then another one.
They form a trail leading down to the dark, empty archive room below.
Once he gets there, the lights start to flicker and he notices a dark figure run past one
of the bookshelves.
To some, electrical disturbances are thought to be an indicator of paranormal activity.
They are often used in horror films to create an unsettling effect.
Science explains that these occurrences in real life are likely the result of disturbances
in the Earth’s magnetic field due to solar winds hitting certain areas differently.
Some even theorize that these strong fluctuations in the magnetic field might affect the human
brain, causing dizziness and hallucinations.
However in this context, that probably isn't the case.
Ben turns towards the stairs where at the upper landing the dark figure has reappeared,
it’s head obscured by the door frame.
Ben hides behind one of the bookshelves watching as it jolts step by step down the flight of
stairs in a jerky manner.
As it gets closer, Ben realizes it’s the burned and headless body of the boy from the
photo.
It suddenly paces after him, in stiff disjointed movements as the lights continue to flicker.
A voice calls after him and he turns around to see a clown now chasing him.
This is a scene that borrows from the concept of the uncanny valley.
When we both recognize something as familiar and yet, instinctively recognize it as not
belonging.
The boy from the book should hardly have a physical form by now and yet, there it is.
And it's moving.
The jerky way the headless corpse shambles down the stairs is unsettling, like it's forgotten
how to move properly after being dead for so long.
It moves dreadfully slow at first, and stops for a tense moment, only to pace frantically
in Ben’s direction.
Finally, the concept of something scary coming out of a piece of media is a rather chilling
form of terror.
We tend to think of inanimate objects like photographs as safe.
We typically don’t expect the ghost in the TV to step out of the TV.
It shatters our expectations of what is real and what we can trust as safe.
It causes an uncertainty that can quickly become something else: fear.
In the next few videos, we’ll be exploring the fears of more characters from The Losers
Club and IT (2017), so be sure to hit the bell icon to be notified when they come out.
My name is Blue Lavasix and as always, thanks for watching.
Did you like that video?
If you did be sure to leave a like and comment which scene from IT (2017) scared you the
most!
Did you like that video?
If you did be sure to leave a like and comment below what you favorite scene from IT (2017)
was!