‘It: Welcome to Derry’ – Review
Brace yourself for a sudden rush of coulrophobia: because it’s time to send in the clown and return to the deeply unsettling, always-watching town of Derry, Maine. Stephen King’s most infamous nightmare has been reborn in HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry, a chilling, gorgeously mounted horror event that drags audiences back decades before The Losers Club ever stepped into the sewer. Here, an unimaginable evil is already awake, and once again, it’s the innocent who begin to disappear. This is a horror story that does not blink, does not soften, and does not let you go. And just in time for Halloween, it delivers terror with teeth.
In 1962, U.S. Air Force Colonel Leroy Hanlon, his wife Charlotte, and their twelve-year-old son Will move to Derry, Maine, just as a local boy vanishes. With their arrival, very bad things begin to happen in the town.
For decades, the name Stephen King has signalled pure terror, a master of atmosphere and dread who can drag audiences into the monstrous shadows of the everyday. His 2017 and 2019 It films, directed by Andy Muschietti, reignited the legend of Pennywise for a new generation, transforming a horror icon into a cultural phenomenon. Now, Muschietti returns to the nightmare, partnering with Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs, expanding the story into a prestige HBO horror series, and from its very first moments, It: Welcome to Derry makes those films look soft by comparison. This show is mean. It’s unrelenting. And it goes places that feel genuinely dangerous.
The premiere episode, ‘The Pilot’, plays the audience like a fiddle, weaponising our knowledge of the original films against us. Muschietti and Fuchs set out to dismantle expectations, and the result is one of the most brazen, shocking first episodes of horror television in recent memory. It’s devilishly clever and sinfully sadistic: a 53-minute gauntlet that makes one thing abundantly clear: No one in Derry is safe.
The arrival of the Hanlon family, Colonel Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Paige), and young Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James), gives the audience a way in. Their move to town is the spark that reignites the horror, and Will’s presence in the narrative connects in fascinating ways to the broader IT mythology. Alongside them are characters who will become deeply significant to the unfolding nightmare: Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack), Veronica “Ronnie” Grogan (Amanda Christine), the calculating General Francis Shaw (James Remar), and the infamous and intriguing Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk), whose presence ties this series not only to IT, but also to King’s other epic work The Shining.
‘The Pilot’ ends in pure, feral, blood-pulsing horror; the kind of scene you watch with your hand over your mouth. And it confirms, without hesitation: This show is not playing around.
One of the most exciting parts of It: Welcome to Derry is the way it expands the mythos. The shift into the early 1960s gives the series a fresh visual and emotional palette; a country on edge, the Civil Rights movement emerging, Cold War paranoia in full swing. There’s tension in the very air. It’s beautiful Americana with rot beneath the paint.
Derry itself is alive here. The town isn’t just a setting, it’s a character. A watchful, hungry character.
From the moment the Hanlons arrive, there is something undeniably wrong with the place. People watch a little too closely. Smiles linger a little too long. Everyday interactions have a coldness under them, as if every resident is pretending not to notice something unspeakable pulsing underneath the streets.
And that something is Pennywise the Clown!
Even before we fully see him, his presence is everywhere. A whisper. A laugh. A flicker of impossible movement in the background. A child’s smile stretched a little too wide. That creeping dread is one of the show’s greatest strengths: it understands that the anticipation of horror is just as traumatising as the horror itself. This is horror with patience. Horror with confidence.
Like the 2017 film, Welcome to Derry leans into the emotional power of children on the edge of a nightmare. There is a touch of Spielberg: bicycles, friendships, whispered secrets, but Muschietti’s sensibilities twist that warmth into something far more predatory. The nostalgia is bait. And the show knows exactly when to snap the trap shut. It’s beautiful, and it’s cruel.
Let’s Talk About the Horror, because dear god, this show is terrifying. Where the films balanced terror with spectacle, Welcome to Derry digs deeper, getting more psychological, more grotesque, and more intimate in how it deploys fear. The scares are personal, custom-built to torment the characters who experience them. It’s horror born from trauma, shame, memory, and vulnerability, which makes it hit. And yes, we must acknowledge: After Episode Two, ‘The Thing in the Dark’, you will never look at pickles the same way again.
With Halloween just around the corner, It: Welcome to Derry is the horror event of the season. Boldly original, viciously imaginative, deeply atmospheric, and executed with absolute confidence, this is elite-level horror television — the kind that crawls under your skin and stays there. It’s scary. It’s smart. And it’s mean in a way that horror fans will appreciate. The clown is back. The town is waking up. And Derry is hungry again.
It: Welcome to Derry is now streaming on NEON. Episode Two, ‘The Thing in the Dark,’ arrives this Halloween.
Image: SKY TV
