It Chapter Two billboard feeds on kids’ fears so much that parents issued a formal complaint

Pennywise the clown scared some kids to an extreme, and he didn’t even lure them into a sewer.

The circus creature otherwise known as IT has terrorized kids in Brisbane, Australia to the point that one parent recently filed a formal complaint, as 9News Australia reported. Yes, though Stephen King’s entity from the Macroverse usually finds the fears of children most delicious, he’s now apparently developed a taste for adult fears.

Perhaps you've seen the It Chapter Two billboard with Pennywise flashing his demonic smile, streaked with red greasepaint — or is that blood?

“[The billboard] just totally freaks them out,” Kellie, one of the concerned parents, told 9News. Kellie claimed her daughter, Piper, was getting repeat nightmares from the Pennywise billboard haunting busy roads in Australia ahead of IT Chapter Two crawling into theaters.

“I get really scared because it’s hard to go to bed when you have a scary picture in your mind,” Piper added. “Before I go to bed, I have to check the whole room, and when I finally go to bed I will wake up after a nightmare.”

Jane Swan, another parent of a child who keeps having Pennywise nightmares, did more than just speak out. She issued a complaint to Ad Standards (which "administers a national system of advertising self-regulation") that insisted advertising for movies with the Australian rating of MA15+ (the equivalent of an R rating here in the States) should be restricted in areas where too many kids are running around. You know, like Derry.

The answer Swan got back from the organization was that “Ad Standards generally has no jurisdiction over the placement or timing of advertisements, except when considering the use of language or sex, sexuality or nudity in advertising.”

Nothing about killer clowns, apparently. So it looks like Pennywise will continue to haunt the streets of Australia. Sorry kids!

Of course, there is no discrediting the nightmares these kids had because of Pennywise, but isn’t Freddy Krueger the one who's supposed to get you in your dreams?

It: Chapter Two opens wide this weekend.

(via 9News Australia)