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

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Watch the terrifying new trailer below:

Here’s the full synopsis:

Still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) has fought to find some semblance of peace. But that peace is shattered when he encounters Abra, a courageous teenager with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the ‘shine.’ Instinctively recognizing that Dan shares her power, Abra (Kyliegh Curran) has sought him out, desperate for his help against the merciless Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality.Forming an unlikely alliance, Dan and Abra engage in a brutal life-or-death battle with Rose. Abra’s innocence and fearless embrace of her shine compel Dan to call upon his own powers as never before—at once facing his fears and reawakening the ghosts of the past.

Ever since I first heard that an adaptation of Doctor Sleep was in motion I was very excited as to what the result would be, and this new trailer does not disappoint. Bathed in terror and awash with the mental scarring of King’s masterpiece novel, along with the haunting reflections of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 quintessential horror film, The Shining, Doctor Sleep is going to take audiences on a terrifying mind trip.

Ewan McGregor looks particularly good as the now grown Dan Torrence, who has not been able to shake off the ghosts of the childhood trauma that he suffered at the hands of his mad father Jack and the macabre presence of The Overlook Hotel. While he’s tried to do something good with his life, the hurt of the past still hangs over him and this will lead to some very interesting places here in Doctor Sleep.

Joining McGregor in this freaky new horror watch is Rebecca Ferguson as cult leader Rose the Hat, and she has a terrifying connection both to the horrors contained in The Overlook and to Dan himself and their confrontation will lead to all kinds of chills for the audience.

Director Mike Flanagan, really appears to be in his element here and he’s crafted something that feels truly terrifying. Pulling from both King’s novel and Kubrick’s cinematic adaptation, there’s an eerie familiarity to Doctor Sleep here thanks to its many visual cues, and the film carries a sickly styled cinematic palette that only adds to the nightmarish sense of dread that is building up around us.

Get ready for the horror to return when Doctor Sleep arrives in cinemas on November 7.

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Dr. Louis Creed (Jason Clarke) moves his family out of the big city to the country. There he discovers that they have moved near a pet cemetery that rests on an ancient burial ground, and when his daughter is killed in an auto accident, he takes the girl’s body to the cemetery…..where it is resurrected in terrifying demonic form.

Right off the bat the horrors really creep up on you with Pet Sematary and directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer fill this new adaptation up with some serious dread. The pair go right to the heart of King’s terrifying narrative and they show great control of the story which comes from both a respect for the material, along with the opportunity in front of them. And that opportunity is to create a damn scary horror movie….and on that point they absolutely succeed.

As a cinematic experience Pet Sematary moves quick and two the point, and the horrors rush head on towards the audience. Kölsch and Widmyerand frame their story with a en medias res structure and showcase the destruction of the Creed family at the hands of the dreaded Pet Sematary that lies on the outskirts of Ludlow, Maine. While most horror films are known to plod on with their stories or simply leave out any type of first act or framework and instead rush straight towards the action, Pet Sematary takes its time to build up its story and the horrors that lie ahead. It’s structure is perfectly balanced and when the monsters are unleashed everything moves at a tremendous pace.

Pet Sematary is very much a character study and central to this is the character of Dr. Louis Creed played by Jason Clarke. Clarke’s portrayal is that of the everyman gone astray. As a doctor he’s a realist with no sentimentality of anything beyond what he can explain, so the very notion of the Pet Sematary and the supernatural completely washes over him. But while you first come to view him as a moral man, he soon crosses the line, and any chance of morality are completely dashed when he learns of the power of this dark and evil place.

Clarke’s portrayal is a layered one and you see his metamorphosis from a good man into a corrupted one all through events that are completely out of his control, but which he still somehow invites into his world through his own actions. It’s very easy to empathise with his performance as Dr. Louis Creed and when he finally crosses the line, and goes to that dark and dangerous place, then you know that there’s absolutely no coming back from this evil here.

Joining Clarke in the film is actress Amy Seimetz who stars as Louis’ wife Rachel Creed, and her performance is one of straight terror. As the primary supporting character Rachel is the quintessential American mum who on the surface looks completely normal and in control, but as the story moves forward we get to peer inside her fractured mind and she becomes the literal embodiment for the idea of trauma. This trauma for Rachel comes from the haunting memories of her sister Zelda, who died of spinal meningitis, and whose spirit still traumatizes her at every moment.

As the film progresses forward and the evils of Ludlow begin to stir in the Creed household, this trauma is only amplified further, and the horrors of her past collide head on with the terror of the present. Seimetz does a great job of portraying this horror, and even though your rooting for her to run and save her family before it’s all too late….there are some evils that simply can’t be undone.

Thematically, Pet Sematary explores some very interesting territory including family relationships, childhood trauma and death, but the most interesting theme that I found in it was through it’s exploration of man’s trespass into the natural world and the consequences that befall anyone who crosses this line. As you witness Louis breaking this boundary and falling upon the ‘sour ground’ of the Pet Sematary, the fear really begins to build in you with this most unnatural of actions and it soon becomes an unstoppable journey of horror.

Pet Sematary is the horror movie that absolutely creeps up on you and once its scares make their way up onto the screen there’s no escape from it. Combining spot on jump scares, gnarly body horror, jagged slasher moments and the unnerving psychological horror of an evil that will not be stopped, you’re sure to be on the edge of your seat the whole time. Kölsch and Widmyerand also make several changes to their adaptation of King’s work and the results are a very fresh piece of horror cinema, and the ending absolutely gets your heart racing!

If you’re interested in experiencing a sinister nightmare that comes full circle then Pet Sematary is definitely the movie to indulge in. But be prepared for the fear to completely wash over you, because this horror movie is unstoppable!

Image: Paramount Pictures

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