OK… so let’s try that again.
Now that director Andy Muschietti used the incredibly violent pilot of It: Welcome To Derry to successfully get our attention (and boy, did he), it’s time for the show to start properly after the spectacular fake out that closed that first episode. What with the majority of the proto-Losers Club getting ruthlessly pulped by a screaming, winged baby, there’s a sense that the show now has to play catch up when delivering the actual plot to us rather than getting us to emotionally invest in a cluster of wide-eyed red flags. However, Muschietti seems to be up for it, as he doles out backstory, links to the future and even a shady military plot that’s sounds a little iffy on paper.
However, while there’s relentless amounts of plot to catch up on – we’re gonna need some more kids characters for starters – rest assured that the makers of Welcome To Derry have still left plenty of time for some more, grotesque visions.
In the aftermath of the cinema massacre that claimed Teddy, Phil and his sister Susie, it’s sadly no surprise that the bigoted townsfolk of 1960s Derry have turned their suspicions to projectionist Hank Grogan despite the fact that he was nowhere near the scene that night and even has an alibi. However, not only are the two survivors of that night, Lily and Gank’s daughter, Ronnie, understandably suffering horrific nightmares of the event, but the two are at odds with what Lily gave as a statement. Seeing as Lily’s spent some years at the Juniper Hill Psychiatric Hospital and is reluctant to tell the authorities stories about a giant killer baby.
Meanwhile, we’re introduced to the rest of Leroy Hanlon’s family as wife Charlotte and son Will finally arrive to join him. But while the book savvy Will accidently finds himself at trouble at school, Charlotte is already is noticing that something strange is amiss with the titular town when passers by refuse to stop a brutal act of bullying in the street. But while his family are struggling to acclimate to their new surroundings, Leroy discovers that his attack by “Soviet spies” on the bace was only a test by General Shaw to prove that he has a rather remarkable ability – he cannot experience fear.
In fact, the more we discover about this so-called “Operation Precept”, the more it sets off internal alarms – especially as it involves soldiers digging up sections of Derry on the whims of Dick Halloran who seems to have some form of ESP. The General admits that the aim of the mission is to locate a “weapon” that will aid America in the arms race that’s sweeping the world, but surely they’re not hoping to find, subdue and weaponise a sewer dwelling, shape shifting, child eating entity, are they?
With Ronnie and Lily still suffering more, potentially fatal visions that hit them in extremely personal places and Hank finally being carted off by the police due to testimony by Lily, high school seems an even more merciless place than usual – but it’s surely preferable to Juniper Hill. Just ask Lily.
I have to admit, I was pretty curious to see how Welcome To Derry was going to handle following up it’s fabulously ruthless ending, because there was that sizable feeling that the show might have shot its bolt as early as its first episode. However, while that gory twist has left the second episode with the need that it has to reset the status quo after mauling a sizable chunk of its child cast, there was also the question of whether the show could keep up the barrage of nightmare imagery that the season opened with. Well, I needn’t have worried because while episode 2 is understandably plot heavy, Muschietti finds a fun balance between forging through multiple plot threads and delivering some nicely fucked up shit.
So let’s start with the hefty amount of plot first that sees introductions, and explanations aplenty and one of the most notable news arrivals are Leroy’s wife and son. Making a black family the main characters in an It show set in the 1960s seems to be something of an inspired move – mainly because a family who have tragically experienced more than their fair share of bigotry is going to already be finely tuned to the weird behavior of the white population of the town. Obviously – and sadly – we can’t hold the corrupting influence of Pennywise the Dancing Clown entirely responsible for the racism present in small town America in 1962, but we see it’s effect not just in the baleful stares that’s are being flicked in their direction, but in the fact that the local police is practically bending over backwards to pin the cinema murders of Hank.
It’s an aspect of Stephen King’s original novel that wasn’t as fully explored in the movies and it’s all part of the prequel aspect of the show that’s making connections between the films and even other stories from the ridiculously prolific author. The new opening credits sequence hints at Derry’s remarkably shitty past that we’ve only heard about (the 1906 Ironworks explosion, the 1935 Bradley Gang Massacre) and we’re due to witness the infamous Black Spot fire that should occur during this very season and young Will Hanlon will become the father of Mike Hanlon, who goes on to ultimately help defeat the evil clown. However, most intriguing of all is the addition of a young, Dick Halloran, the same man who is destined to go on and become the cook of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. It seems that he’s using his “shine” to locate various markers buried around Derry in order to track down this “weapon” that apparently can radiate pure fear. Now, the only part of this episode which makes me worried about the rest of the season is that the fact that the military somehow knowing about Pennywise feels like one of those prequel swings that just seems a bit too broad considering the secretive nature of the creature – but I guess I can ride it out.
However, while the episode is full to the brim with other character aspects (Lily’s mental history and her familiarity with Juniper Hill, Marge Truman’s desperate attempts to get in with the popular girls, Will making friends with the curious Rich), it makes sure to reserve space to deliver some or of the showstopping, Pennywise-powered visions that plague both Ronnie and Lily. Proving that the clown hasn’t lost its knack for playing dirty, he nails the girls with visions concerning dead parents, with Ronnie’s vision having her connected to a monstrous version of her mother via a goopy umbilical chord hinting that she probably died giving birth. Elsewhere, Lily is confronted with the disembodied body parts of her father scattered within numerous pickle jars while out shopping and the fact that each scene insists in taking each sequence so damn far means that they carries the same feel of the show-stopping nightmare sequences you got from the flashier Nightmare On Elm Street instalments.
Impressively proving that the more extreme moments of the first episode wasn’t a fluke (having someone find their bed turn into the inside of her dead mother’s uterus isn’t exactly playing things safe), while rebuilding that savaged cast, Welcome To Derry solidifies it’s world building while still ensuring that Pennywise isn’t playing. But while the military plan to capture the shape shifter may cause some classic, prequel, continuity issues, the show is still thriving throughout this fertile period of King adaptions.
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