Though ratings prevent disturbing horror movies from being seen by children in theaters, they have no way of filtering who has access to movie advertising.
When a highly anticipated flick's most recent trailer has hundreds of millions of views, some of those views are bound to be kids. The same goes outside advertising like posters and billboards.
The original Stephen King novel It and subsequent first movie based on it was absolutely petrifying for a young generation of viewers.
Now, those viewers are the parents bringing their own kids to see the squeal of the It reboot, which is arguably even creepier.
Clowns are just...creepy. I'm not talking like, John Wayne Gacy creepy, but like, aesthetically creepy. The makeup. The laughing. The general VIBE.
The character of Pennywise just works, and it's likely because even before It, we were already afraid of clowns to begin with.
This particular Pennywise poster has gotten a lot of complaints from angry adults who claim that their kids shouldn't have to come face-to-face with pure evil on their walk to the bus stop every day.
"It just totally freaks them out," Australian mother Kellie told 9News.
"I get really scared because it's hard to go to bed when you have a scary picture in your mind," she says, "Before I go to bed, I have to check the whole room. And when I finally go to bed I will wake up after a nightmare."
"Some people do enjoy going to horror movies and that's fine and that's their choice, and I understand that," she explains, "But we're not choosing to see this poster.
She argued that movies with a MA15+ rating should be "restricted in areas frequented by children," but she was told that "Ad Standards generally has no jurisdiction over the placement or timing of advertisements, except when considering the use of language or sex, sexuality or nudity in advertising."
Guess when Georgie says "You'll float too!" he means all of us, whether we're horror movie buffs or not.
h/t: 9News
