Is Stephen King’s It A Slasher Movie? Pennywise’s Problem Explained

screenrant.com:

While Stephen King’s It is often called a slasher movie online, the unique modus operandi of its villain Pennywise means that the horror hit doesn’t technically fit that descriptor. The slasher genre is a horror mainstay, as is It author Stephen King. From the Friday the 13th franchise to the Scream series, slasher movies have been terrifying audiences since the late 70s.

Similarly, King has been scaring readers and viewers alike since his explosive 1974 debut Carrie. However, as unlikely as it may seem, King has never authored a conventional slasher story. Some of his efforts, like The Dark Half, stray near the sub-genre, and he once pitched a Friday the 13th novel from the perspective of Jason Voorhees entitled “I Jason.“

Related: Stephen King Missed The 1 Good Thing About Stranger Things Season 4 Split

However, despite how prolific the author is and his iconic status as a horror writer, King has never written a straightforward slasher. Perhaps because of this surprising fact, the 2017 adaptation of King’s hit It (soon to be given a TV prequel) is often listed online as one of the greatest 2010s slashers. However, since most of Pennywise’s victims don't die when the villain pursues them, the movie’s body count is very low and It hardly counts as a conventional slasher as a result. Pennywise’s unusual modus operandi means he kills almost no characters onscreen after the opening scene, with a possessed Henry Bowers ending as many lives as the movie’s main villain. As a result, It is heavily influenced by slasher tropes, but the 2017 hit doesn’t qualify as a full-blown slasher itself.

Thanks to the adaptation’s decision to drop the source novel’s ambitious time-hopping structure, there is an argument to be made that It