When it was first announced that IT (2017) and its sequel IT: Chapter 2 (2019), based upon the horrifying Stephen King novel, will be getting a prequel series documenting the origins of Pennywise, I was conflicted. Though I have not read the novel, but according to my father it is terrifying as it made him put down Stephen King forever. Nevertheless I found the films to be fairly effective horror, even if they were flawed. So the idea of watching Pennywise stalk Derry in an earlier cycle had some appeal to it. But at the same time, the project smelled like a cash grab, retreading what has been done before. Needless to say I was wrong as IT: Welcome to Derry unleashes the most terrifying version of Pennywise to date. So terrifying that I was wondering why he was so kind to the 1988 Loses Club.
The year is 1962 and spring has arrived in the small town of Derry, Maine. However, despite the warmth of spring melting away the snow a darkness is beginning to awaken in Derry. Children begin disappearing, violence is brewing in the town’s streets, and the military starts performing digs around the city’s border. Bad things are starting to happen in Derry as a cosmic entity who disguises itself as a dancing clown named Pennywise has awoken from its slumber and it has awoken with a large appetite.
From the opening moments, it becomes clear that IT: Welcome to Derry is operating on a darker, more brutal register than the film adaptations. I haven’t read the novel, but the films always felt restricted in terms of its horror. We know that the Losers Club defeats Pennywise in the films. That inherited plot armor blunts the horror that was inflected onto the 1988 Losers Club. But with this prequel series, that plot armor is fully removed. The tables are turned as we know this time around Pennywise wins. The only real question is who is going to make it out alive. With that plot armor stripped away, IT: Welcome to Derry unleashes the most terrifying version of Pennywise to date.
Pennywise holds nothing back as he haunts the children of Derry as he feeds on their fears with open cruelty. While some scares are undercut by shaky visual effects, but when the series leans into practical effects and the uncanny valley, it becomes genuinely unsettling. That’s where Welcome to Derry finds its bite. Whether it’s Pennywise luring you with your dead father, preserved in pickle jars filled with his body parts, forcing you to relive birth as your dead mother delivers you again, or turning a nuclear-family road trip into something grotesque and unrecognizable, the horror is as imaginative as it is disturbing. These are not just monsters popping out of the dark. Pennywise feeds on the children’s worst fears, their insecurities, and their unprocessed trauma. Pennywise isn’t just playfully taunting, he is mean, brutal, and absolutely terrifying.
Narratively, IT: Welcome to Derry follows a structure that will immediately feel familiar.. A group of children realize that they are being haunted and hunted by a creature that disguises itself as a clown. Together they decide to investigate it only to discover they are way in over their heads. It’s a story that we have already seen play out in the film adaptations. But what gives Welcome to Derry a leg up is the scale and savagery of horror that Pennywise inflicts onto these children. The unhinged cruelty Pennywise inflicts onto these children makes this narrative feel as fresh as it is dangerous. And it doesn’t stop there as the series expands outward with a web of subplots that deepen the mythology and flesh out the lore of Derry, Maine.
To complement the Losers Club of 1962 arc is the US military trying to capture Pennywise so they weaponize it. While conceptually this narrative showed a lot of promise, it does partially stumble in execution, especially in the final two episodes. While watching Pennywise completely rip through US soldiers like tissue paper and Dick Halloran (Chris Chalk), yes that Dick Halloran from The Shining, go head to head with Pennywise in a battle of mental fortitude, were compelling. This narrative crumbles under the weight of its own ambition in the final few episodes where internal logic was partially thrown out the window. And just like with many Stephen King stories, IT: Welcome to Derry ties itself off a bit too neatly as I was hoping for more carnage, more consequences and more bodies left in Pennywise’s wake.
Despite its narrative missteps and uneven visual effects, IT: Welcome to Derry ultimately succeeds where it matters most. It strips Pennywise of its restraints and unleashes the cruelest and most vicious incarnation we have seen to date. This is not a playful trickster, nor a monster bound but inevitability, but a mean, merciless cosmic entity that Bill Skarsgard embodies with terrifying precision. When the series is firing on all cylinders, Pennywise dominates Derry every second he is on screen.
My Rating: B+
All episodes now streaming on HBOMAX
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