One of the most anticipated horror movie trailers in history dropped this afternoon with the arrival of the very first teaser for Andy Muschietti’s IT Chapter Two, and it damn sure did not disappoint. The wait was well worth the trailer we got today, which included a *chilling* full scene along with a smattering of clips featuring Pennywise and the adult Loser’s Club.

Aside from the “Beverly returns to Derry” scene, we didn’t get all that much footage from the film in this first teaser, but there were a handful of moments that caught our attention…

So let’s go through this thing frame-by-frame, shall we?

First off, did you catch the red balloon floating past the New Line Cinema logo at the start of the trailer? It’s the little things that amuse me, and I *love* movie-specific studio logos.

Okay, so getting into the actual meat of the trailer, we begin with Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain) returning to her childhood home in Derry, Maine, which is initially a cheerful trip down memory lane when she discovers the “Your hair is winter fire” love note she received from her secret admirer in the first film, which of course turned out to be Ben Hanscom.

Beverly smiles, reminiscing about the past, but the seemingly kind old lady who lives in the former Marsh house soon reveals herself to be anything but harmless. That’d be Mrs. Kersh, one of the many forms that “IT” takes in Stephen King’s novel. In the book, Mrs. Kersh falls apart and transforms before Beverly’s eyes, and it looks like that’ll happen in the movie too.

“We can explore his unpredictability now that we’ve established the character for the audience,” Skarsgard explained to Entertainment Weekly in an interview piece this week.

The scene from the trailer shows the guise slipping out from underneath “IT” as the facade of Mrs. Kersh begins to essentially malfunction. We see a nasty open wound on her chest, letting Beverly know something isn’t quite right about the old lady; she tells Beverly that “no one who dies here ever really dies,” the creature eerily freezing up after the line is delivered.

This is what happens when an otherworldly creature *pretends* to be human.

While Mrs. Kersh heads into the kitchen to grab some cookies, Beverly explores the rest of the house, finding a creepy photo on the wall. The old lady explains that it’s her father, who had joined the circus upon arriving in America, but Beverly clearly recognizes that the person in the photo is actually a more human-looking version of Pennywise the clown.

Of course. Mrs. Kersh/Pennywise is just messing with Beverly’s mind here, and we ultimately see her strip off her clothes and lunge after Beverly. In the book, the old lady takes on the voice of Beverly’s abusive father, taunting Beverly before she’s able to escape the home. Mrs. Kersh did appear in the 1990 adaptation of King’s novel, played by Florence Paterson.

We then get our first look at the other members of the Loser’s Club as adults: Isaiah Mustafa as Mike, Bill Hader as Richie, James McAvoy as Bill, Jessica Chastain as Beverly and Jay Ryan as Ben. James Ransone’s Eddie and Andy Bean’s Stanley are not in this particular shot, but we’ll talk about that in a second. In a window, they see a reflection of their former selves…

Chapter Two will feature flashbacks to the ’80s, and you can expect to see brand new footage of the characters from that time period in addition to, likely, footage from Chapter One.

Now what’s interesting here is that several subsequent group shots only show *six* of the seven members of the Loser’s Club at most, and one of them is definitely James Ransone’s Eddie. Andy Bean’s Stanley is the only member that we never see in this first teaser, which would suggest that Stanley dies before everyone returns to Derry, like he does in the book.

In King’s novel, Stanley kills himself when he finds out that IT has returned to Derry, but it’s always possible that Chapter Two could play with our expectations on that front…

One thing we see in the trailer is that the surviving members of the Loser’s Club reunite at a Chinese restaurant, like they do in the novel. Writer Gary Dauberman recently explained to /Film, “In the first one, they’re all together in school so you see them in a bunch but 27 years later, I don’t think it’s a spoiler they’re sort of scattered all over the country. So we see pieces of who they’ve become which I think is really exciting. Then of course it was great to see them return to Derry. The Jade of the Orient is such a defining and iconic scene in the book. That was something I remember as a thing I was writing towards. It was like, ‘Okay, coming up is Jade of the Orient. That’s going to be super cool.’ It was a nice signpost to write towards which I dug.”

But will there be fortune cookie crabs? We’ll have to wait until September to find out.

In this awesome shot we see James McAvoy’s Bill haunted by the image of his brother Georgie in the infamous storm drain, presumably a vision that “IT” conjures up in Bill’s mind.

Welcome back, Georgie’s arm.

Bill Hader’s Richie (talk about perfect casting, eh?), meanwhile, is being tormented by Pennywise in grand fashion, with this crazy shot initially teased to us via leaked set photos last year. The filming of this very scene was in fact the first glimpse we ever got of Chapter Two, and it promises to be a really cool set-piece that refers back to a scene from Chapter One.

Clearly, this film’s balloon budget was off the charts…

Here we have what is easily the most haunting, nightmarish image from the whole trailer, which looks to show Bill Skarsgard ripping the Pennywise makeup off his face. It’s hard to know what exactly we’re looking at here, and it could very well be a nightmare sequence of some kind. We can’t wait to see what this is all about, and isn’t that the goal of a movie trailer?

Another cool shot from the trailer shows off that a carnival is taking place in Derry at some point in the film, and we shortly thereafter see Bill frantically running through the carnival…

Again, this could be some kind of nightmare sequence as well. Either way, carnival-set scenes in horror movies are always great, so here’s hoping they take us into that Funhouse!

One of the last shots we see in this teaser trailer is Jessica Chastain (we assume) swimming in a literal sea of blood, which is surely the bloody scene Chastain had teased earlier this year on “The Tonight Show.” She told Jimmy Fallon, “In the movie there’s a scene…someone said on set that it’s the most blood that’s ever been in a horror film… in a scene.”

Beverly was similarly dowsed in blood in the first film, so this all checks out.

And finally, the trailer ends by giving us a nice clear look at Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise, taunting a child and doing that super creepy thing with his eyes. As we’ve pointed out in the past, that’s an actual ability that Skarsgard has, just one of the many things that makes him so perfect for the role. You can check out a high-res HD image of that final moment down below!

IT Chapter Two opens in theaters and IMAX worldwide on September 6, 2019.