#birth-trauma

#birth-trauma

So far, It: Welcome to Derry has mined this dynamic for numerous scares: Lilly's dead father sliced up into pickle jars, the pieces congealing into an octopuslike monster ordering his daughter to give him a kiss; Teddy's father's stories about the Holocaust transforming his son's lampshade into a lattice of screaming faces, all matted hair and stretched skin. These are nightmares made real, given cogency and urgency by how well they mine the sense that parents are both our first benefactors and our first tormenters.