‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ TV Review: Newest Pennywise Installment Bites Off More Than It Can Chew [B-]

For two nights in November 1990, my high school classmates and I were riveted and delightfully frightened by the TV event of the season: the two-part miniseries Stephen King’s IT. Even though we would collectively share the disappointment when the big scary monster turned out to be a giant spider, Tim Curry’s terrifying turn as Pennywise the Clown would stay with us for years.

In the age of nostalgia-fueled reboots, many were excited when Warner Bros announced a movie adaptation of King’s 1986 novel. But to some of us, it felt like a betrayal. Tim Curry is, after all, a beloved and irreplaceable icon. Recasting literature’s creepiest clown didn’t just seem impossible, it seemed wrong. Until Bill Skarsgård came along in Andy Muschietti’s two-part film series and made the character his own in a project that would turn out to be every bit as riveting, fun, and creepy as the miniseries before it.

Now, we are in the TV prequel era and six years after IT: Chapter Two landed with more muted praise and enthusiasm than chapter one, Muschietti returns to the inescapable Maine town with the prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry, an eight-episode tale that takes place in 1962, 27 years before the self-titled Losers Club would encounter Pennywise in the summer of 1989.

Welcome to Derry opens on the sleepy, falsely secure town one wintry night. As snow falls silently outside, the Capitol theater is half-filled with moviegoers watching Robert Preston sing to the good people of River City about lots and lots of trouble. In reality, The Music Man wouldn’t be released until six months later, but since Derry exists within its own time, we can overlook the inaccuracy, particularly if it is in deference to a nod to Hollywood’s golden age, however on the nose it may be.

The people of Derry don’t know it, but trouble far worse than a scandalous new pool hall threatens the glossy veneer of their mid-century idyll. Kids have gone missing recently, unexplained disappearances that no one seems all that interested in talking about any deeper than to blame Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), the Black man who works as the Capitol’s projectionist. Despite a lack of evidence or witnesses, and his 12-year-old daughter Ronnie’s (Amanda Christine) insistence he wasn’t there, Hank becomes the convenient target of Chief Bowers (Peter Outerbridge), the police chief who cares most about delivering the appearance of safety. When abused and outcast Matty Clements (Miles Ekhardt) disappears, his friends band together to find him, unwittingly putting themselves in danger of an eons-old menace.

The story of IT and its two adaptations follow a group of bullied middle schoolers, the Losers Club, first as children being tormented by Pennywise the clown, and then 27 years later as adults who have vowed to stop him. Welcome to Derry follows a similar character structure, only this time with a group of kids on one side of the story and a group of adults – including some of their parents on the other. While Matty’s friends band together to find him, the nearby air base welcomes a new arrival, Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo). The base is buzzing with activity as the Cold War escalates and the Russians and Cubans inch the world closer to nuclear war. The Americans, under the command of General Shaw (James Remar) are tearing up the landscape in search of the ultimate weapon, and Hanlon has a particular quality Shaw believes will be useful in both finding and wielding such a powerful tool.

Soon, Hanlon’s wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige) and son Will (Blake Cameron James) join him, moving off base into a charming Derry neighborhood. Charlotte finds some of her neighbors very neighborly (“We’re not like Shreveport up here.”) and others not. Will, a science nerd, has trouble making friends until he meets Rich Santos (Arian S. Cartaya), a slick-haired Cuban boy who talks a lot but has a good heart.

We meet other classmates too, including Phil (Jack Molloy Legault) and Ted (Mikkal Karim Fidler), Matty Clements’s supposed best friends who feel guilty about his disappearance because they weren’t there for him when he needed them. Lily Bainbridge (Clara Stack ) was a friend of Matty’s too, although she kept it to herself, not wanting an association with the Clements boy to provide more fodder for gossip and torture than she already endures from the mean girls known as the Patty Cakes. On the outskirts of this loosely connected group sits Ronnie Grogan, unwelcome because of the suspicions against her father.

Among the grownups, we spend the majority of our time with the Hanlons and a few officers on base, including the general and a surprise guest from elsewhere in Stephen King’s universe: Dick Hallorann (Chris Halloran), the man we know as the shining protector who would save Danny Torrance from the clutches of the Overlook Hotel. Hallorann senses the sinister nature of General Shaw’s weapon, but is compelled by duty and curiosity to aid in locating it.

It is in the parallel storytelling that this iteration of the Pennywise story sometimes struggles to find a good balance between the oozing, cartoonish fears of kids manifesting in disembodied voices drifting out of drainpipes or visions of the decaying corpses of their dead parents, along with the real and tangible fears of ostracization, being locked away in Juniper Hill Asylum, and losing their friends. Even at age 12, some of them understand the reality of a broken justice system. As the accusations against Hank Grogan mount, Rich Santos says naively, “This is America. They can’t just dump people in jail for nothing,” to which a wiser Will Hanlon asks, “Are we talking about the same country?”

The challenge with any prequel series is in finding ways to touch on the important points of the source material while also trying to create stakes and tension in a story with a known conclusion. In Derry, we meet new characters mixed in with a few familiar names, and though we don’t know the eventual outcome for all of our major players, we know that this is not the group that will stop Pennywise. And we know that he will continue to wreak havoc on this place for another 50 years before he is eventually destroyed.

If the story kept the original structure and stayed mostly with the kids, the juxtaposition of real and imagined horrors would fare better. On the cusp of young adulthood, the internal battle between childish and mature promises a wealth of confusing emotions and experiences. But because so much of the story also focuses on adults whose worries and concerns take the shape of midnight attacks, false accusations, the looming threat of communism, a local indigenous tribe watching their land be torn up, and a growing sense of unspecific dread, some of these very legitimate worries lose impact in a haze of oft-trod territory. Among the adults, nothing feels new or groundbreaking, and again, we already know the outcome of their ill-conceived quest.

The stakes then have to come from our investment in who survives Pennywise this go-round and who does not. With five of eight episodes available to review, the series is entertaining enough to be worth watching, even if many of our main characters can’t quite sell themselves as belonging in 1960s America. Skarsgård’s return as the dancing clown is a delight, though it is too soon to tell whether he brings anything new to the role or continues delivering more of the same thrillingly silly scares that made his performance nearly as iconic as Curry’s.

IT: Welcome to Derry rests in the category of unnecessary prequels that are engaging enough for fans but fall short of expanding the universe in any meaningful way. Without a clear path or new and unexpected mythology to explore, the series will very quickly run out of steam.

Grade: B-

The eight-episode season of IT: Welcome to Derry begins streaming on HBO Max October 26 with new episodes weekly.