Sometimes prequels (like sequels) score high, and sometimes they miss their mark big time. On that basis, I wasn't sure what to except of HBO Max's Welcome To Derry, beyond the fact that its trailers were inviting. However, that Bill Skarsgard would be revisiting his role as Maine's balloon-luring Pennywise (and for the most part, in the nostalgic, A-bomb-bound year of 1962, no less) made the concept more relevant and therefore, clinched my devotion to the cause.
The eight-part series, created by showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane, is divided into three, complementing strands: one featuring a group of brave youngsters (played by Clara Stack, Matilda Lagault, Miles Ekhardt, Blake Cameron James, Amanda Christine and Mikkal Karim-Fidler), who must tangle with It; a civil unrest portion, dealing with Derry's prevalent prejudices; and a related section on Dick Hallorann (of The Shining fame), during his Airman phase, under the cordial command of James Remar's General Shaw, who employees the former's "shine" to locate the town's morphing monster, which the military hopes to use as a Cold War weapon or is it more a means to halt homegrown divisiveness?
Each category is well rendered and could have stood as the overriding focus of any series, book or movie. The prejudicial-pawn portion is the harshest for its narrowmindedness (punctuated by its shocking Black Spot Speakeasy Massacre), and the children's plight is more than right in capturing yet another frightful side to Stephen King's novel. (Of the children's sequences, the pop-eyeing one is the series' gross-out standout, and viewers are still speaking of it. Much can be said, as well, of Pennywise's nuclear dance and its surreal fallout.) However, I found the Hallorann stretch the most interesting and not just because of its Shining foundation, but rather that it worked as logical lead-in to bracket and probe our adversary's deeper origins.
Like Tim Curry (who played Pennywise in the 1990 miniseries), I never found the mind-manipulating-spider reveal all that satisfying. Though some may claim that Welcome to Derry took a blasphemous turn by giving its monster an extraterrestrial, Outer Limits/X-Files/The Thing backstory (as well shoehorning the notion into Native American lore), I found the conceptualization acceptable, with It becoming particularly more layered when the welcoming Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe) connected the creature to her dear dad.
I do have one wee complaint. Skarsgard (who, incidentally, acts as an executive producer) should have been more visible during the series' early phases, ala flashbacks and segues. In the series' preliminary parts, he tends to morph out of range most of the time and is perhaps even more computer-enhanced than he was It's two-part, theatrical adaptation. That's all fine and dandy, I suppose, when it comes to instilling freaky horror, and yet many of those clownish teases never progressed to fruition, even if Episode 7's 1908, Bob Gray stage show (coupled by the real-deal dancing clown's subsequent lament) was tip-top on every old-time, origin level.
The surrogate Pennywise's tormenting stunts (no matter short or long) also ingrained an interesting notion: how similar the entity is to Freddy Krueger. The comparable attributes have always been there (constituting a popular topic among geek subculture), but for some reason, Welcome to Derry seemed to emphasize such more through its sewer gloom, gore and gutsy grime. (Such also made me ponder why no one has yet established a Pennywise vs Freddy graphic series, along the lines of Freddy vs Jason vs Ash. The crossover seems a bloody no-brainer.)
Anyhow, I enjoyed Welcome to Derry, and huge kudos go to the ironic, opening credits, which are blessed by Patience and Prudence's "A Smile and a Ribbon." The Lynch-ian insertion has haunted me often as I've skipped along on the treadmill in recent weeks: a sweet but quirky earworm that now works as one of my all-time favorites, right up there, in fact, with "I've Written a Letter to Daddy," and considering how much I appreciate that Baby Jane Hudson staple, that's telling a ton.
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Pennywise's fallout sequence could encompass an entire, series run. An ongoing nightmare would be ideal for the hellish character, as well as Freddy. PHANTASM has, in fact, initiated such an approach (of dreams and reality interspersing), too, through the Tall Man. A Tall Man addition to a Pennywise/Freddy crossover would be all the merrier, in the darkest of ways, of course. Heck, why not toss in the Cenobites for some added, demented mirth?
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