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Welcome, Popversians, to another edition of The Coldest Open, the column where I, your humble horror host, examine the history of scary cinema through the first moments of its standout entries. As I write this, we are a scant month and a half away from that creepiest of months, October, and with it, the return of Pennywise the Dancing Clown; courtesy of HBO’s IT: Welcome to Derry. To celebrate the third coming of that most perverse of Pagliaccis, I thought we’d take a moment to examine the first time we ever met Bill Skarsgård’s titular villain, in Andy Muschietti’s IT: Chapter One.

The way Coldest Open works is this: I'm going to be breaking down five different hallmarks of every great cold open in horror, then judging whether the movie in question pulls them off. If so, that hallmark will get ranked with a "Cold" verdict; if not, it'll get ranked with a "warm." At the end, we'll tally up those verdicts and determine a temperature, ranging all the way from Lukewarm to Absolute Zero.

Make sense? I thought so - you seem like a clever batch of Losers (that’s a compliment in this case, remember). So if you have your rain gear on and you’ve waxed your boat (no, I don’t hear how that sounds, what do you mean?) let’s float our way down into this.

IT: Chapter One's Cold-Blooded Killer

As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And since “It” is the topic of conversation, after all, we hold that this statement is true. Despite the fact that the introduction of the evil Pennywise pretty much goes down the same way it does in both the Stephen King novel the film is based in and the Tim Curry-starring adaptation before it, the child-eating villain’s introduction is pitch-perfect, and one of the best openings to a horror movie of the 2010s.

What makes this intro work so well is that, despite the horror you know is coming, you can understand how a child’s brain might consider this whole affair a perfectly normal thing. Pennywise is, at first, dopey and unthreatening; he even appeals to poor Georgie’s child logic when the kid (more on him in a sec) brings up the “don’t talk to strangers” failsafe that protects young folks like him. Then, to bring it all home, Pennywise makes the smells of the circus appear for Georgie, luring him deeper into a sense of safety before springing the trap.

Eventually, we’ll come to know that Pennywise can project everything that a child fears onto reality. What’s extra scary about his intro, though, is that he can also project some childlike delights.

Verdict: Cold

IT: Chapter One's First Person to Get Iced

Let’s just get this out in the open now - the death of Georgie Denbrough is a rough start to this story. Sure, you can maybe distance yourself from the first high schooler that dies to kick off a slasher, but a kid this young? It’s a devastating blow, made even worse because this movie introduces him so well.

In its opening moments, the movie presents you with just about the most idyllic of brotherly relationships you can imagine. No, they’re not overly nice to each other, but what pair of brothers is? Still, older brother Bill clearly cares for his sibling in the way he helps him make his paper boat, and the hug they share before Georgie leaves is an absolute heartbreaker considering what’s coming.

Down the line, we’ll get to feel righteous vengeance as Bill and the rest of the Losers kick Pennywise’s ass, but for now, all we’re left with is the same grief that the Denbrough family feels.

Verdict: Cold

IT: Chapter One's Polar Plot Intro

As we’ve already covered, the movie’s intro does a great job not only introducing our heroes and villain, but also connecting them with the viewer in an emotional, memorable way. However, there’s another character in this opener that helps establish the premise of the film, maybe as much as Pennywise and Bill, even though she’s only in it for a couple of shots.

I’m talking about the old lady on the porch who sees Georgie at the sewer drain. A big theme of the IT story is that the adults of Derry are either powerless or choose not to help the children who are disappearing, and here we get our first glimpse at that idea in action. This woman comes out to a storm, sees a lone child in the flooding streets, and decides to turn her back without so much as calling out to him.

It’s a chilling moment that tells the viewer that the kids we’re about to meet are on their own, a thought just as terrifying as the supernatural entity that pursues them.

Verdict: Cold

IT: Chapter One's Frozen Snapshots

I know, I know, we’ve spent much of this piece talking about emotions and thoughts and ideas; can we talk about the goddamn monster for a minute?? Don’t worry, I’ve saved that bit for where it best fits, that is, the intro’s imagery, of which Pennywise’s ghastly monster-bite face is the most memorable thing we see.

Well, almost.

See, the shark-toothed, anime villain face Pennywise makes as he leaps up from the storm drain to kill poor Georgie is certainly haunting (and there’s plenty of merch bearing this image out there to prove it), but what we see next is maybe even worse: an armless, bleeding Georgie, trying to crawl his way away from his doom.

That picture, I have to say, is probably not on too many T-shirts out there, and for good reason.

Verdict: Cold

IT: Chapter One's Bone-Chilling Music

Let’s get something straight here - I adore Benjamin Wallfisch's soundtrack for the IT franchise. It has a small-town, Americana feel to it that goes so well with the fictional town of Maine and so many of the other places in Stephen King’s overarching work. However, I think the piano theme that begins the movie is just a little too on-the-nose for my liking.

The melody is dreary and mournful, which we already kind of get in the movie’s opening shots of a rained-out Derry. There’s a bit of music that builds as Georgie descends into the basement to get wax for his toy boat, but it doesn’t hint at the larger Pennywise theme to come. Or at least, not that I could tell.

Maybe I was too busy being sad.

Verdict: Warm

IT: Chapter One's Cold Open Temperature: Frozen Solid

The story of IT is so embedded in our culture at this point that it might as well be a folk legend - a dark, nightmare reflection of the mide-century American ideal that other media worked so hard to portray. And what’s so great about this intro is that director Muschietti knows you know the story.

You knew Georgie would die heading into this movie; Muschietti made that death hurt. You knew Pennywise was a predator from the start; Muschietti showed you how it lures its prey. But perhaps the biggest message this intro sends - and, from what I’ve seen so far, the message IT: Welcome to Derry will send - is this:

I’m a Stephen King fan, you’re a Stephen King fan. How about we sit down and be scared about it?

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.