IT: Welcome to Derry

Fog, Fear, and Family Curses: Welcome to Derry Season 1 Review HBO's Welcome to Derry Season 1 chills the spine of Stephen King's It universe, unearthing 1962 Derry's festering secrets in a taut eight-episode prequel. Showrunners Andy Muschietti and Tommy Brennan sidestep the Losers' glow, spotlighting the town's doomed denizens: pie-baking matriarchs, boozy cops, and wide-eyed kids teetering on Pennywise's abyss. It's folk horror distilled—less spectacle, more soul-rot—building from insidious whispers to a finale blaze. Grade: A-. Jovan Adepo's Leroy Hanlon, a Black vet battling racism and red balloons, anchors the ensemble with raw fury. Cynthia Erivo's Martha Marsh ferries maternal terror through kitchen rituals, while young stand-ins for future Losers (Eddie Kaspbrak vibes included) deliver pint-sized pathos. Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise lurks as a viral specter, not a showboat—melting into snowmen, hissing in mirrors. Episodes brew like a nor'easter: early setups layer mill drudgery with vanishings, mid-season blackouts spawn shadow-stalking regrets. Pacing dips in a lore-heavy flashback, but Chung-hoon Chung's frostbitten cinematography—desaturated whites pierced by crimson warnings—rights it. Themes probe generational sins: bigotry's bite, neglect's feast, complicity's curse, laced with 1960s civil rights grit. Horror hits intimate: sewer births evoke Alien's dread, carnivals clot with bloody candy. Sound warps jazz to wails, burrowing deep. Minor subplots meander, but "Winter Fire" erupts with time-twisted revelations, seeding Losers' doom. A reclamation of King's sprawl—sharp, tragic, shiver-worthy. Derry calls; answer if you dare.

"IT Welcome to Derry" is horrifying for all the wrong reasons. This is a lobotomised, grotesque, over the top, wholly wrong headed, poorly scripted mess. A largely unrecognisable departure from the vastly superior novel and films. The only real upsides I can see is quality acting and solid production values but that is seriously, as far as this series, gets. In summary, no doubt the marketing gremlins will try telling us how "wonderful" this is. That said, fans, like myself, who have read Kings novel and enjoyed the excellent "IT" films over the years, wont be easily fooled. One to avoid.

**The show is written for pre-teens and it feels like a silly WB series 🤢** I'm really disappointed with this latest TV show from HBO. The acting is absolutely atrocious, and the writing isn't much better. And I never notice stuff like CGI, but some of the "monster" special effects in this look sloppy or something, like they were thrown together on an internet cafe computer. We literally laughed out loud at some of these "scary" scenes. Anyway I thought it was going to be a somewhat serious horror series, but instead it's just a bunch of writers throwing goofy stuff at the wall to see what sticks. It's definitely intended for young adults/teenagers, which feels more like WB and less like HBO, and personally I was hoping for a show that is somewhat more cerebral. We deserve far better from HBO, usually in shows like Succession we get great acting from phenomenal actors. Definitely not the case in this sloppy show. Seriously who cast these people? PS I guess all the 13 year olds jumped on this website to give this a 10 lol. I recently read an article about this and they called it **Review Bombing** which often happens for with movies from India as well as pre-teen TV shows. **1/10**