A Review: "Welcome to Derry" Misses the Mark

There’s a scene, in the last episode, which I just finished of this horror prequel series, where the camera affords itself an establishing shot from inside of the gymnasium of Derry’s unfortunate high school.

It states, “Home of the Trappers.”

I remember it clearly, since I was a Trailblazer, whatever that was, way back in those awful high school years.

The camera then pans down to a wide variety of early 60s youth marching into the space. With the supporting characters providing commentary, in walks one of the students dressed as a terrapin. Big shell on their back, huge mascot head.

There. 

Right there. 

No, it did not pull me out of the moment-but it was confusing, as like, the establishing shot said, clearly….TRAPPERS.

That’s a tortoise, a turtle. 

A shell game.

But this mild confusion really populated this entire show and illustrated, in a few brief moments, why this program was probably not the best that HBO has to offer in the horror television program theater. Which is weird, because one of the things I watched immediately upon getting HBOMax just last year was the incredible “The Outsider.” Oddly, I had not read that book, but the show was immense and really worked as a whole with the time to have many characters working towards a very specific end. 

Serving as a dark, stylized prequel to Andy Muschietti’s “It” films, “Welcome to Derry” plunges viewers into 1962 to map the psychological rot of America’s most cursed small town.

The series follows a group of local kids and families, including a young Dick Hallorann, as they navigate the town’s systemic violence, trauma, and prejudice, all while Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise begins to stir from his 27-year slumber.

It is less of a traditional slasher and more of a grand, tragic piece of cosmic horror, showing that while the monster under the town is terrifying, the rot inside the townspeople themselves is what truly feeds the beast.

Sounds tasty, doesn’t it?

I love me some Stephen King. Like Harry Potter for a certain generation, from about 6th grade onwards, Mr. King’s novels kept me reading and reading some more. I had even tackled IT, but it was a bit of a slog at over 900 pages, making the media based them longer titles. I liked the movies in recent memory, and I liked the miniseries.

And I was stoked at the first fifteen minutes even here, with its horrific encounter with the famed Pennywise. 

And then? It stopped. The whole premise was just stopped. The convoluted plot had the monster making longer and longer and longer plots to creep out the kiddoes before devouring them–at least Freddy Krueger had a nightmare to work with. 

This? 

If the clown beast was that hungry, why are they playing with their food so much?

It became nonsense, making the more poignant moments seem like lip service for heady topics like racism. At one point, they were blaming the occasional disappearance on minorities that came and went. 

Okay, that’s something…but then nothing more happened. 

And as a prequel? It does have an opportunity to retcon items, for sure. But, in this version of the story, THE ENTIRE STUDENT BODY is kidnapped and turned into thralls.

THis was never reported. Everyone seems out of whack when it comes to Pennywise in the actual novel, movie. I don’t know about you, but if an entire high school is kidnapped, yes, there would be headlines. 

And that storyline, btw? 

Dropped. 

Even literally. 

Even with the welcome presence of Bill Skarsgård, he just bites and yells, giving some energy to the scenery, but unless he’s on the screen, there’s not much to watch, unfortunately. The CGI is also pathetic, with a snow storm that kicks up out of nowhere, just to give characters reasons to not see each other in the grand finale. 

Folks. Skip this one. Go watch “Stranger Things.”  or “The Outsider.” Or the movie, “IT.”

Peace and love,

The BardBear, Brehon