IT Welcome to Derry Episode 2 keeps the same energy from the first episode and honestly it might be even better than what we got last week, this show is not messing around with anything at all. Right after all those kids got killed at the theater last week the town tries to move on super fast by blaming the easiest target they can find witch is the black projectionist Hank, because of course they do, this is 1962 Derry and they need someone to pin this on real quick so they can all move forward like nothing happened, the police chief knows damn well this guy has an alibi but he gets pressured into arresting him anyway by two racist ass councilmen who just want someone behind bars weather its the right person or not, and his daughter Ronnie is pissed as hell because she tried to do the right thing by helping those kids escape and now her dad is getting screwed over for it witch just feels wrong on every single level you can imagine, the whole situation is just messed up and shows how terrible people can be when there looking for someone to blame instead of facing the real problem witch is a killer clown running around town eating kids. I wonder if at some point Ronnie would embrace evil and get carry away because I honestly though she was going to tip over at school when she was arguing with Lily.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19244304/
- Platform: HBO MAX
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Pennywise is still out there terrorizing both Ronnie and Lilly with some seriously messed up nightmare sequences that didnt made me feel that scary for myself but for Ronnie, the Lily one was more terror but Ronnie could easy get eaten, like these are not your typical jump scares, these are psychological torture sessions that mess with your head and I was not ready for any of it at all, Ronnie gets attacked by her dead mother crawling out of what looks like a placenta sack on her bed with glowing yellow eyes trying to pull her back in with the umbilical cord still attached, the whole thing plays on her guilt about thinking she killed her mom during childbirth witch is just insane to watch and super messed up because not only she is getting all this trash talking from her dead mother of how SHE, Ronnie killed her but then she pulls her back into her "belly" but its an actual monster trying to eat her, Pennywise knows exactly were to hit people were it hurts the most and he does not hold back at all. Lilly has this completely fucked up vision at the grocery store were pickle jars start moving around on there own trapping her in this maze of shelves that keep reorganizing, then she sees all her dead friends faces on cereal boxes with Pennywises name written on them saying great taste because he eats kids witch is dark as hell and then her dad shows up as this pickle creature thing covered in goo and its just disgusting, its nasty and will probably flashback next time you eating pickles, the way HBO is using practical effects here is just top tier stuff, like you can tell they spent serious money on making these scares look real and not some cheap CGI nonsense that looks fake and takes you out of the moment completely.
The show also brings in the Hanlon family witch is super important because Will is Mike Hanlons dad from the movies so we know this kid makes it out alive at least, Leroy the dad finds out the military brought him to Derry for some secret weapon project that uses fear as a weapon and they need him because he has no fear after getting brain damage in combat during the Korean War witch sounds completely insane, General Shaw tells him they are looking for something buried under Derry that generates debilitating fear in people and could theoretically kill someone on the spot witch is obviously Pennywise or at least parts of the meteorite that brought him to earth millions of years ago, his wife Charlotte is dealing with racism everywhere she goes in town because its 1962 and people are terrible, she sees kids beating up another kid in broad daylight and nobody does anything about it like everyone just walks by and ignores it because Pennywise has this whole town in some kind of trance were everyone just ignores the bad stuff happening around them like its completely normal, the butcher even says boys will be boys and its just gross how people turn a blind eye to everything, there son Will is getting bullied at school for being the new kid and for being smart as hell, he is into science and telescopes and space instead of sports witch his dad Leroy does not really understand because Leroy is more of a throw the ball around type of guy but Will does not care about that stuff at all and I love that about his character, the military subplot is wild because it adds this whole other layer to the story that I was not expecting at all, like I thought this was just going to be about kids fighting a clown but now we have the government trying to weaponize Pennywise to win the Cold War witch is the dumbest plan I have ever heard but also super interesting to watch.
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The kids are also starting to form there own version of the losers club here and its nice to see new characters after losing so many last week, Will and Ronnie end up in detention together and they bond over being outsiders and you can tell these two are going to be close friends by the end of the season, the way they talk about science and feeling like they do not fit in just feels real and not forced at all witch is hard to pull off with kid actors sometimes but these two nail it completely, Rich shows up to and he seems like a cool kid who plays drums in the marching band and has a crush on Marge, I also like how the show sometimes breaks the scene for example at school while Rich is talking to Will, another kid randomly throws a smoke bomb in the hallway as a prank and its funny as hell watching him just smile and eat his empanada while chaos unfolds around him and then tells Will to RRRUNNNN!!!, there is also this whole thing were Lilly is trying to fit in with the popular girls but they keep making fun of her and its just typical mean girl bullshit that happens in every high school ever, the queen bee Patty is super manipulative and gets her friends to laugh at this one girl for having a crush on some kid named Scotty and then turns around and makes fun of Marge for wearing the same sweater two days in a row, like who cares about that kind of stuff when kids are getting murdered by a clown but I guess priorities are different for some people, Lilly ends up getting manipulated by the police chief into basically snitching on Hank even though she did not mean to, he threatens to send her back to Juniper Hill witch is this asylum were she was sent before after her dad died and she clearly has trauma from that place, at the end of the episode she gets sent back there anyway witch sucks because she was trying to do the right thing and it backfired completely.
After two episodes I am giving this a solid 8 out of 10 because the scares are brutal and creative in ways that most horror shows would never even attempt, the acting is great across the board especially from the kids who are carrying a lot of the emotional weight and not just screaming and running around like idiots, the story is building up to something big that I can not wait to see play out over the rest of the season and its not easy to pull off this type of prequel shows because you usually know were everything is going, this is how you do a prequel series for real, it respects the source material but also adds new stuff that feels fresh and not just a retread of what we already saw in the movies, Alien Earth tried this too but was not as good as Welcome to Derry. HBO really spent the budget on this show because it looks like a movie not a TV series at all, the production value is insane and you can tell they did not cheap out on any aspect of the show from the costumes to the sets to the practical effects everything just looks expensive and polished, the opening credits are also incredible with this animated postcard style showing all the horrible events that happened in Derry over the years from the Paul Bunyan statue to the Bradley gang shootout were Pennywise was hanging out a window with a gun witch is insane, if they keep this quality up for the remaining episodes this could end up being one of the best Stephen King adaptations we have gotten in years and I would even say that not even the movies had this kind of impact, I can not wait for episode 3 to see were this all goes and if the kids finally meet Pennywise face to face or if they keep teasing us for a few more episodes witch would be fine by me because the buildup is working.