New Yorkers were recently transported to the sewers of Derry after Pennywise decided to catch the subway home.
As the highly-anticipated release of IT: Chapter Two nears closer, a prankster decided to try – try being the key word, here – and frighten commuters on the L train in New York City.
Dressing up as the central antagonist of the film and Stephen King’s seminal horror novel, IT, the clown is videoed strolling down the carriage with a balloon.
The unfazed passengers have their heads buried in their phones as Pennywise creepily grins, even muttering ‘We all float down here’ to hit the impression home.
As the video attracted attention online via Instagram account @subwaycreatures, magician Alejandro Torres, 25, stepped forward as the costumed menace.
It’s an absolutely fantastic bit of cosplay: Torres makeup eerily resembles Bill Skarsgård’s interpretation in the recent adaptation, with the white and red clown makeup, frilly clothes and red hair.
Torres had been filming a promotional video in Manhattan dressed as the iconic villain, and his friends wanted to try and get another shot of him dressed up before going home.
Warner Bros.As reported by Patch, Torres said:
I was trying to get back to Brooklyn. I did my best to stay in character but I was exhausted.
I want to take stuff that can be seen as scary and make it fun. The reactions so far have been really positive.
Instagram user Ryan B. Taylor was also on the train, and decided to take a video of his own – which viral video account @subwaycreatures picked up and shared. It’s been viewed nearly 700,000 times.
Some users pointed out the people in the clip don’t appear to be frightened at all. One person wrote: ‘Hilarious. Someone waved at him and he waved back. Clearly no one is threatened by Pennywise in New York.’ Another commented: ‘I love seeing New Yorkers completely unphased [sic] like this is a typical work commute.’
But Torres insists when he first boarded, people were ‘terrified’.
As reported by the MailOnline, Torres said:
Immediately when I boarded people were terrified, but a good 10-15 minutes passed when that video was taken so at that point they’d already seen the shtick.
Pennywise is the monster at the heart of IT: a shapeshifting clown that emerges every 27 years to feast on children in the town of Derry, Maine.
ABCThe world grew more acquainted with the villain after a mini-series adaptation in 1990; with Tim Curry offering up a timelessly petrifying performance in an otherwise schlocky effort.
In 2017, IT returned to our screens, with Skarsgård establishing a place in cinemagoers’ nightmares – it also pulled in a huge $700 million at the box office.
Warner Bros. PicturesThe sequel will see the Losers’ Club all grown-up and returning to Derry to face the demons of their past. It has an all-star cast: including James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain and Bill Hader, and promises to be a darker and more violent film than the first.
There’s even clown-only screenings being organised for the film’s release, which will likely be right up Torres’ street.
IT: Chapter Two hits cinemas on September 6. Check out the trailer below:
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.