"A Coming of Age Story-with Jump Scares": Jason Ballantine on Editing It

In horror movies, kids are often exempt from the carnage. It's a trope of the genre--the cute moppet that any experienced horror viewer knows is in absolutely no peril within the confines of the film. Andy Muschietti's adaptation of It opens with a grade-schooler in a yellow rain slicker having his arm torn off by a sewer dwelling clown--a creature who then drags the child into the underground bowels of Derry, Maine. The film's brutal ground rules are immediately established – anyone is fair g...