When the arrival of a military family with their young son coincides with the annual disappearance of a young boy, the town of Derry descends into clown-laced madness and disaster!
Stephen King horror properties are everywhere these days, and most of the OG ones – Carrie, Pet Sematary, The Stand, Children of the Corn, etc – have been remade multiple times. IT is arguably one of King’s most notorious properties, due mostly to one particular underage scene in the original long version of the book from way back in 1986. (No, we’re not delving into that controversy, look it up yourself if you want to know.) So, plenty of fans were skeptical when it was announced that King’s TV miniseries of IT, starring the astounding Tim Curry as Pennywise, was going to get a remake, even if it was from the director of a Guillermo Del Toro-backed movie. But when the IT remake came out in two separate films, each one starring the incredible, rapidly-climbing Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, fans were ecstatic and loved this newer vision of director Andy Muschietti. Then it was announced that IT was getting a whole TV series entitled IT: Welcome to Derry and fans wondered, would Skarsgård reprise his role from the films? Make sure you know where your freaking kids are already, and let’s get into this!
The year is 1962 and U.S. Air Force Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) has recently moved with his wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige) and their son Will (Blake Cameron James) to the Derry, Maine, military base. Acceptance of Black folk in the military is a struggle even today, sometimes depending on where in the world you are, and sadly for the Hanlons their move to Derry is no exception. Leroy’s new boss Lieutenant General Francis Shaw (James Remar) has no real time for skin-color issues, but is rather concerned with finding and somehow controlling a weapon that can be used to end the Cold War. And it is there that Leroy meets Airman 1st Class Dick Halloran (Chris Chalk), a man cursed (at least in his opinion) with telepathic and clairvoyant mental skills that make him shine like a beacon in the darkness, who’s allowing himself to be used by the military to find said weapon.
The horrific death of Matty Clements is about par for the course of a presence-haunted town like Derry, where every couple of decades (since 1908 at least), the town has a spate of inexplicable deaths and disappearances, usually children. The presence of the Native American tribes around and in the town, along with the rather terrifying forests that border Derry, keep the untold history of these awful deaths when the thing in the forest rises and needs to feed. And it’s a good damn thing they do too, for when the evil thing from the forest rises this time, it looks as though a certain dancing clown may actually break its cage and escape Derry. And it’s the Indians, with their history and lore and spiritual ways, led by the extremely strong Rose (Kimberly Guerrero) who happens to have a history with Shaw, who will know the best ways to freaking prevent that!
Schoolkids are often little mini-mushrooms that grow straight or twisted depending on what you feed and water them with, frequently reshoveling the same tired sh*t their parents did, like issues with skin colors. Or social status. The Pattycakes of school, led by the redoubtable Patty Stanton (Maya McNair), embody this nasty way of life, and try to drag Marge (Matilda Lawler) into it with them, at the expensive cost of losing old unpopular friends, like the supposedly batty Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack), and any potential new friends, like Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron) himself. Ronnie Grogan (Amanda Christine) never gave a damn what anyone thought of her, unless it has something to do with them psycho white folks screaming that her film projectionist father Hank (Stephen Rider) must have had a hand in Matty Clements’ death. And lastly is our adorable little valentino, Rich Santos (Arian Cartaya), a Cuban American who befriends newcomer Will and sports the cutest crush on Marge.
And those five – Lilly, Will, Rich, Marge, and Ronnie – are what comprise our Losers Club here in the 60’s. Ronnie’s dad being a Black man accused of murdering a white child is all the excuse the corrupt police chief of Derry, Clint Bowers (Peter Outerbridge), needs to unleash his Klan affiliations on, well, everyone of the wrong skin color here in Derry. But while the adults are running around betraying each-other and acting astonishingly selfish, as adults tend to do, the kids are preparing to take matters into their own damn hands, and find Matty Clements in the sewers themselves.
So, way back in 1908, the traveling carnival came to Derry. And Bob Gray (Bill Skarsgård), the former circus performer who absolutely misses the big top life and speaks of his eventual return there wistfully to his daughter Ingrid (Madeleine Stowe in present-day Derry), also known as Periwinkle because of course she has to follow in daddy’s footsteps, are both subject to the madcap rampage of the IT that lives and hunts in Derry. Bob’s entire performance piece as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, shown to a town of bumpkins who wouldn’t know real art if it stole their noses, is nevertheless enthusiastic and far more theatrical than one would expect from a clown. And when Bob’s life is eaten by IT, so too it seems was his dramatic flair and love for Ingrid, for she is left to languish into an adult, bereft of her father, but forever holding onto the ideal that Bob lives there somewhere inside the alien Pennywise.
The players are gathering, the stakes are quite high, and of course, the villain has rigged the final confrontation to in theory domino in his favor – if your favorite food happens to be children, an entire high school of kids all getting got by the Deadlights is a clear victory. The military adults are trying to capture and control Pennywise, Shaw just has to have his weapon, and inevitably fighting with each-other over whether or not such a thing is even possible ensues. But our Losers Club is still left, still determined to save everyone they can, diminutive status as a youngling be damned!
Skarsgård reprising his role as Pennywise and this new one as Bob Gray, along with Andy Muschietti, director of the two IT remake films of recent memory, who also directed several episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry, is a joy and an absolute gift to those of us who saw and loved the films. Delving into the rich IT lore from a whole town perspective but with OG familial versions of the Losers Club kids was a brilliant choice too, and the fact that the show deliberately set up season 2 for options of time travel to either the past or the future, is great. Holla for the Margie and Pennywise confrontation, which ties together the show and the films gorgeously. Bringing in the Dick Halloran character from The Shining was also an outstanding way to move the story along with lore from another King work. Stephen King is known for having many of his characters cross between his worlds, most notably with one of his ultimate evils, Randall Flagg, so to do it this way was a great dark easter egg for those of us who devour all of Kings works.
Catch the OG Losers Club as they battle Pennywise the Dancing Clown for the souls of the Derry town inhabitants, on HBO MAX and Hulu now!
Reviewed by Alicia Glass