'It' Clips Show Off Pennywise The Clown, Terrified Children, Etc.

The Dark Tower was a painful reminder that the world of Stephen King adaptations is littered with the corpses of terrible movies bearing the names of great books. However, if the early buzz is to be believed, Andy Muschietti's upcoming take on It will be the antidote King fans sorely need – a movie that understands his trademark terror, but also his big, frequently under appreciated, heart.

But since the movie doesn't open for another two weeks, we'll have to make due with this trio of It clips for now, which show off Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise the Dancing Clown and the young members of the "Losers' Club."

The first clip will probably be of the most interest to you – it's the new version of the novel's terrifying opening scene, which traumatized millions of kids when it was brought to the small screen in 1990 television miniseries adaptation of the novel. You know the set-up: young Georgie's paper boat washes down a storm drain, leading him to come face-to-face with Pennywise. We knew that Skarsgård deliberately avoided Tim Curry's iconic original performance as this character and the result is something very different and very creepy – there's something animalistic about his performance here, like you can see the beast just waiting to burst out of that pasty white make-up.

The other two clips don't feature Pennywise, but they do feature his potential victims/the only kids able to stop him: the Losers' Club. In King's original novel, the storyline flashes back and forth between the kids battling this shapeshifting monstrosity and their adult selves returning to finish the job. Muschietti's adaptation only tackles one half of the book, saving the grown-up storyline for a potential sequel. And if these clips are any indication, we'll be happy to spend an entire movie with these kids, who show off a genuine chemistry here.

While I was happy to hear that It is a scary movie, I was more pleased to hear that it nails the dynamic between the Losers, young outcasts who come together over one terrifying summer and are forced to grow up a little too quickly. When I visited the set of It last year, it was clear that these kids had become genuinely good friends offscreen, with the experience of shooting the film feeling like some kind of insane summer camp. These clips, combined with the early buzz, suggest that the offscreen bonding has paid off in a big way on the screen.

It opens on September 8, 2017.