Goddamn. When I recapped Alien: Earth earlier this year, I thought I knew gross . I've seen Ichi the Killer . And Eyes Without a Face . Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom . The Human Centipede ! I've bore witness to profane videos of Internet legend. I truly thought I knew horror and depravity, and that I had a stomach of steel. But IT: Welcome to Derry has taken a step beyond what I thought was possible on mainstream television.

Gore aside, IT: Welcome to Derry 's fourth episode, "The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function" is less about literal eyesight than it is the horrors some see and others refuse to acknowledge. We begin with children holding evidence of the supernatural; what they get are shrugs from cynical, condescending cops. We continue with a Black

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