It trailer: Creepiest moments from new look at Stephen King film

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

The new trailer for Stephen King’s It has just dropped, and so have our stomachs. Here are 25 of the creepiest moments in the new footage, including a shot of Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise in a room full of disturbing clowns – which itself includes a tribute to Tim Curry’s version from the 1990 TV movie. Very sweet. (Also very alarming.)

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

The trailer for the film, out Sept. 8, begins in a Stand By Me vibe, with the young heroes from The Losers Club swimming, and exploring the woods, and trading furtive glances at each other while Stan Uris (played by Wyatt Oleff) speaks ominously about the unseen dangers kids see coming.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Bill Denbrough (played by Jaeden Lieberher) also gives an inspirational speech outside the abandoned house on Niebolt Street, which has a well leading into the sewers of Derry, Maine, that makes it a favorite exit and entry point for the shapeshifting evil known as Pennywise. It’s also where the Losers will make their first stand against the monster.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

This appears to be a post-Niebolt Street shot – note the T-shirt on Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor) which now has a bloody gash ripped through it. The Losers live – but just barely. They’ve realized they are stronger together. And this isn’t the first major wound Ben has endured…

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Earlier in the film, Ben is also cornered on a bridge by Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton) and his gang of thugs. As in the book, they lift the heavyset boy’s shirt, and Bowers literally uses a knife to carve his initials on Ben’s belly, getting as far as an “H” before the kid escapes.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

In one of the most unsettling (and realistic) moments of the trailer, an older couple drives by just as the attack is taking place. They look. They even slow down. But they don’t stop to help.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Why don’t they help? The red balloon that wafts up from their backseat answers the question. They’re under the spell of Pennywise, who feeds on anger and evil and fear. Or … is Pennywise only with them because they’re the kind of people who would see a child being attacked and do nothing?

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

We also get a new look at Bill Denbrough’s little brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) having his fateful encounter with the clown while sailing a paper boat down a rain-swollen gutter. The eyes … just the eyes in the darkness. What could be worse?

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Okay, yes. This is worse.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

But most disturbing of all … the storm drain is empty. The street is empty. No clown. No boat. No Georgie. Not even a splash of blood. Just gone.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Despite the grief and longing those in the Denbrough house must feel, imagine wanting desperately to find a missing child … and that child finds you instead. Here’s Bill following a trail of muddy footprints that leads to a malevolent vision of his lost little brother.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Also scary: dropped LEGO bricks – and bare feet.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

In the basement, Georgie’s specter lures Bill into floodwaters where (as we saw in the previous trailer) Pennywise awaits. “If you come with me, you’ll float too,” the little boy says.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

In a shot from Pennywise’s sewer lair, inside a massive cistern below the town, we see exactly what Pennywise means when he says “we all float down here.” The other losers look on as Bev Marsh (Sophia Lillis) rises into the darkness, transfixed within some malevolent power.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

The trailer also gives us a taste of the history King created for Derry, showing tragedies and murders in old newspaper stories that go beyond the usual.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Derry has always been this way. It’s why Pennywise thrives here.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

He has always been here, too.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

The trailer gives us onle a few close-up looks at Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise, but this one is the clearest — and most violent. During an encounter in her own bathroom, in which Bev hears the voices of lost children speaking to her from the sink drain, It appears in full light …

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Usually, he lurks in darkness. And just like in the storm drain, the shadows make this manifestation of the formless evil entity even more terrifying.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Sometimes the less you see, the worse it is. Here, all we can discern are his amber, glowing eyes. This looks like the plastic draping meant to keep the cold inside a meat locker. Not sure, but I think in the film, the father of Mike Hanlon (played by Chosen Jacobs) may be a butcher.

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Stephen King's I

Warner Bros.

In a previous trailer, we saw Mike standing outside a doorway to a meat supplier, while smoke and burning limbs reached out for him. This appears to be a reference to The Black Spot, an African-American dance club that was burned down by racists decades before in Derry. Here, we see the same burned hands reaching for the boy.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

You can read Pennywise into the faces of the “good” citizens of Derry, like Mr. Keene, the pharmacist (whoser leer and look seems like an homage to the principal from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.) From King’s novel: “Mr. Keene grinned a little. If Bill had seen that grin, it might have gone a good way toward confirming his idea that Mr. Keene was not exactly one of the world’s champion nice guys. It was sour,…”

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

Mr. Keene is the one who breaks it to little Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer) that he doesn’t really have asthma — his inhaler is just a placebo, meant to placate the boy’s hypochodriac mother. Eddie lives in fear, has been told he is weak. In this shot, we see him in the house on Niebolt Street as a hand reaches for him. This is the hand of The Leper, another manifestation of It — a walking disease who connects to Eddie’s deepest fears.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

There isn’t much in this trailer that’s more freakish than Pennywise unfolding himself from inside an abandoned refrigerator in the Niebolt house.

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Stephen King's It

Warner Bros.

But this clown room in that same empty home … That also chills the blood. We all know who — or what — is beneath that sheet. We’ll see more when It debuts on Sept. 8.

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The 25 Creepiest Moments In the New Trailer For Stephen King's It

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