It seems that the mass exodus to TV of virtually every major horror icon continues apace as streaming follows up Alien: Earth with It: Welcome To Derry. However, in this shuffle to the small screen that’s also included the Evil Dead, Chucky and an upcoming Friday The 13th prequel series, it’s worth pointing out that the first, on-screen appearance of Pennywise the Dancing Clown also occurred on television back in 1990 with the mighty Tim Curry leering from beneath the face paint.
Of course, the nine episode Welcome To Derry is a prequel to Andy Muschietti’s phenomenally successful, two-part adaptation that whisks us back to the town of Derry in the early 60s to see what life was like pre-Losers Club when that shape-shifting clown moved around unopposed. Part of It’s epic reputation comes from the fact that it’s loaded with decades of lore that includes everything from child murder to hate crime that all stems from the warping influence of the cosmic child chewer, but is it enough to sustain an entire season?
As snow falls on the streets of Derry in 1962, we find troubled child Matt Clement attempting to hitch a ride out of town and gets a lift from a seemingly cheerful family out for a nighttime winter drive. However, as the journey goes on, it soon becomes apparent that there’s something about this family unit that ain’t quite right and weird tics that include excessive spelling and the eating of raw liver soon spiral into the usual nightmarish shenanigans when the mother suddenly gives birth to a mutant bat baby that fatal attacks the doomed boy.
Four months later and we find a small number of students still affected by Matt’s “disappearance” with social outcast “loony” Lilly Bainbridge feeling the brunt of the guilt. She’s joined by quiet Jewish boy, Teddy Uris, and wild-haired conspiracy theorist Phil Malkin, each had their own issues with the troubled lad, but when both Lilly and Teddy have alarming visions of Matt, they pool their knowledge to try and figure out if their friend could maybe still be alive.
Meanwhile, commander Leroy Hanlon and his partner Pauly Russo have arrived at Derry Military Base in order to test a new kind of plane. However, Leroy has barely been there five minutes before the ugly head of bigotry raises its head and later that evening, masked intruders attack him while he sleeps in order to get the secrets of his mission out of him – but so far this all seems far removed from what’s going on with the children.
Questioning the last person to see Matt alive, the investigating kids approach young Ronnie Grogan whose father works as a projectionist at the local cinema and they find that not only has Ronnie had visions of Matt too, but she knows that the song he sung to Lilly comes from a musical that’s currently screening. Sneaking into the cinema late at night to screen the film and hopefully learn more clues, things suddenly go terribly wrong when Matt shows up in the movie and unleashes that gnarly bat baby on his former friends. The ensuing bloodbath proves that just because you’re a team of enterprising kids, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to get torn limb from limb.
Considering that the original story sprawls across numerous time periods, It has always been a tale that’s favored long term storytelling, so it’s no big surprise that with nine episodes making up the season, expectations of clapping eyes on Bill Skarsgård’s iconic Pennywise need to be stashed away for at least the next couple of weeks. However, in order to offset the lack of the balloon fetishing clown, Muschietti attempts instead to load his pilot episode with as much shock value as he can to try and throw us all off the scent.
For a start, we see that the franchise hasn’t lost its habit of tossing out extended sequences that tries to repulse us before going super-freaky with the opening scene that sees poor Matt accept a ride out of town by a family who aren’t what they seem. Muschietti ramps up the weird before going full bugnuts and having the mother violently and graphically give birth to a child that would look more at home in Silent Hill. Blood spills, a pregnant stomach bulges sickeningly and the moment hits the squeamish red-zone when the “mother” tanks her bloody knickers to the side to let the mutant sprog splurge out before it starts it’s frenzied attack. It’s quite the opener and the director has obviously planned to include such epic, gross-out segments such as this to counter the fact that Pennywise probably isn’t going to show his face for quite a while.
From here, we get to know our players – or at least we think we do. There’s a whole side plot involving the arrival of Leroy Hanlon (Mike Hanlon’s grandfather) to the Derry Military Base and instantly experiencing racism from one of his new team; but secret, on-site warehouse aside, his arc and a subsequent attack by possible spies, doesn’t have much to do with the main thread for now. However, once we turn our eye over to Derry High School, we find ourselves in somewhat overfamiliar territory. Yes, we’re now in the 60s (where the flashback parts of the novel were originally set before being shifted to the 80s), but the gang of weird, rambling and often foul-mouthed kids are not only highly Kingian, but are awfully reminiscent of the original Losers Club.
There’s the fast talking trash mouth with wild hair, there’s the quiet Jewish kid and there’s the troubled girl and after they start having nightmarish visions of their missing friend (Lily sees his finger coming out of the plughole; Teddy sees his face stretched out as a screaming lampshade) we’re on the typical Losers trail as they quickly scour local records and question Ronnie about what went down four months ago.
So far, so It. However, while the show seems instantly in danger of just retreading a well worn path, it seems that Muschietti is actually leading us into something of a trap. You see, while we’re fully convinced that the show is following standard It procedure, a scene that sees Lily, Ronnie, Teddy, Phil and his kid sister Susie try to find a sizable piece of the puzzle during a screening of The Music suddenly violently flips the script, reintroduces that mutant bat-bay, and essentially obliterates virtually the entire kid cast in one fell swoop. Only Lily and Ronnie manage to escape (and part of Susie’s arm if anyone’s counting) with the rest literally being torn limb from limb in front of our very eyes. It’s a ballsy start for a show to allow us to believe we’ve just been watching the same old characters (Phil’s basically just Richie Tozier) follow the same old plot, only to brutally rug pull us out of complacency by spraying viscera everywhere, and I’m incredibly down with it, but it does kind of mean the next episode sort of has to start from scratch.
Still, that’s a problem for next week and we’ll cross that sewer when we come to it; but I’m curious to find out where the show’s going to go after trashing the typical It layout in favour of shock deaths and that fantastic, gruesome opening. Still, even though Muschietti obviously still knows his way around a fucked up sequence, can he possibly keep this up for eight more episodes – especially after using the entire first episode as a cruel, bloody prank worthy of the clown himself?
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