I remember being a mean child, insulting my school friends when we were still only as tall as our parents' knees. I remember being sad, always carrying black thoughts with me like a grim balloon, though I didn't understand why. Stephen King, however, would have known.
I think the horror writer challenges his audience's expectations (and maybe memories) of what children are capable of and uses this subversion to create some of the most empathetic stories in horror. This applies, too, to those who take after him, like director Andy Muschietti, currently working on HBO Max's It: Welcome to Derry prequel, and Scott Derrickson, who's behind the purportedly "scariest horror movie of all time" Sinister (2012), as well as film adaptations of King's son Joe Hill's The Black Phone story. They remind us what it's really like to be a small, fragile thing in the world – it's not just crayons and fairies.
