There’s a police department in Pennsylvania that’s been getting a lot of attention online thanks to a prank inspired by the upcoming IT adaptation.
On Tuesday morning, the Lititz Borough Police Department shared two photos of the prank, which are very surreal depictions of something that could easily be a scene from the movie.
Someone had tied a bright red balloon to a sewer grate, as if Pennywise himself were tempting civilians to come down and “float”.
The department managed to say “we want the local prankster to know that we were completely terrified as we removed these balloons from the grates and we respectfully request they do not do that again.”
Everyone seems to be scared and on edge as the movie creeps towards theaters. The movie even scared Stephen King’s son Joe Hill:
“Andres’ adaptation of IT is one of the 5 scariest films ever made,” Hill exclaimed. “It’s tremendously humane. You love the characters in it. But it is just relentlessly terrifying.”
He continued:
“Only Jaws, The Exorcist, John Carpenter’s The Thing and Let the Right One In are scarier. It’s that good. It’s that brilliant.”
Meanwhile Bill Skarsgård has previously revealed that he’s been having nightmares from how terrifying an experience playing Pennywise was:
“It’s funny. I went back to Stockholm after we wrapped, and every night for two weeks, I had these strange recurring Pennywise dreams. I was him, but I was in the wrong setting, somehow. I was upset that people could see my face. It was surreal. I can’t explain it.”
IT hits theaters September 8, 2017.