IT: Welcome to Derry review: "A supremely confident step back into the history of Stephen King's cursed town and killer clown"

This review is spoiler-free.

Stephen King's IT is a famously hefty tome, clocking in at well over 1,100 pages. But while most readers remember that King's tale of kids battling an evil clown from another dimension takes place over a couple of different time zones – the 1950s and the 1980s – the story stretches back much further than that. We learn that the entity known as Pennywise has been lurking beneath the streets of one small American town for centuries, periodically awakening to cause chaos before slumbering for another 27 years or so.

It's this sense of a rich, detailed history that informs IT: Welcome to Derry, HBO Max's new eight-episode prequel to Andy Muschietti's two-part adaptation from a few years back. Muschietti is back behind the camera here, directing numerous episodes (at the time of writing it's unclear exactly how many) and co-showrunning the series alongside Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs.

We've seen the first five episodes of the show and, so far, it's shaping up to be a confident, if unsurprising, series that delves deeper into the mythology behind its shapeshifting terror.

The show chiefly takes place in 1962 (the Muschietti timeline differs from King's novel), roughly 27 years before poor Georgie Denbrough is dragged into the sewers. The show follows a new group of kids who come face to grease-painted face with Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Same old, same old, you may be thinking, but Welcome to Derry impresses with the ruthless way it dispenses with characters when they are no longer needed. This clown kills.

That's demonstrated in a bracingly unpleasant opening scene where young Matty (Miles Ekhardt) tries to hitchhike his way out of town but instead winds up joining the long list of kids who go missing in this town.

Cut to four months later and Matty's school friends – Lilly (Clara Stack), Teddy (Mikkal Karim-Fidler), and Phil (Jack Molloy Legault) – are still grappling with his disappearance. Lilly, in particular, feels guilt for brushing him off in the past after he made a clumsy pass at her. So when she starts to hear his voice coming from the pipes, she rallies the gang to try and find him.

Maine attraction

Meanwhile, two young aviators – Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) and Pauly Russo (Rudy Mancuso) – have arrived in town to work at Derry's surprisingly expansive airbase. Leroy is hoping to bring his family up somewhere quaint and quiet, but immediately faces prejudice from his white subordinates in the Air Force, and judgmental looks from his new neighbors – and that’s before he finds himself roped into working on one of the base's dangerous "special projects" alongside one Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk).

If that name sounds naggingly familiar, then it's probably because we've met this character before, in another iconic King novel and its film adaptation: The Shining. Hallorann's direct involvement in this story is an invention for the show (though he is referenced in the book), but an intriguing one. His psychic abilities give him a unique connection to the threat lurking in the town's sewers and hint tantalizingly at a larger mythology at work here. Are we witnessing the start of a new King Cinematic Universe? Perhaps, though it feels more like a nod to the fact that most of King's books already take place in a loosely-connected multiverse, replete with references and crossovers.

That said, this is undoubtedly a lore-heavy show. The showrunners have talked of making three seasons, which will step further and further back in time to probe at the true nature of the evil beneath Derry. We get a few hints of that here, with several flashbacks taking place before 1962.

There's a degree of risk there, and a danger in making an unknowable entity like Pennywise too explicable. From these five episodes, however, the show appears to be walking that particular tightrope quite skilfully, adding intriguing hints about the beast, without taking the focus off the scares.

And scary it is – though largely in a fun, gross out way rather than psychologically terrifying. The first episode has a curtain-raising shock value that sets out the show's stall and lets the audience know that the violence of the movies will not be toned down here. The following four episodes settle into a steadier groove as the various characters are pulled into Pennywise's orbit, but remain brutal when necessary – one incident involving a bandsaw is memorably grim.

Send in the clown

There's a sense of the showrunners perhaps feeling the need to step up the bloodshed, here. In the years since Bill Skarsgård last played Pennywise, the killer clown subgenre has become rather crowded, with the Terrifier franchise in particular upping the stakes when it comes to the old ultra-violence. Whatever the case, gorehounds will not be left disappointed.

Not that the clown itself features too heavily, at first. Pennywise has always been a shape-shifting monster, and we see it in various different grotesque forms throughout. At times, the show's reliance on CGI sticks out – a winged digital baby is never going to be as menacing as Bill Skarsgård in his full pomp – but it does save the threat from becoming too repetitive. By the time that we get to the first full Pennywise moment, it feels well-earned.

Over-familiarity is, however, something that the show struggles with elsewhere. Fundamentally, Welcome to Derry isn't doing much that the movies didn't do – and far more economically. The one big plot innovation here – the military's involvement – adds an interesting new flavor, but most genre-savvy viewers will be able to guess, with a high degree of accuracy, exactly what the soldiers are up to in Derry.

There's also the Stranger Things of it all. That show borrowed liberally from King's canon, and especially IT. Things came full circle when Andy Muschietti cast Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler in that show) as Richie Tozier in the 2017 IT. Welcome to Derry, though, feels even more in debt to the Duffer Brothers' creation, with its gang of nerdy kids on bikes investigating the supernatural mystery while the military foolishly poke at things they don't really understand.

Then again, does a show like this need to reinvent the wheel? Part of the appeal of IT – both the original book and the movie franchise – is its rich sense of history. Of a generational evil that pops up every few decades to stir up the tension and fear in Derry. This is, by its nature, a cyclical story with elements and character types that recur.

To a certain extent, Welcome to Derry just needed to port the basic structure of a group of likeable kids battling a child-eating monster into a different time period and explore the fears that characterized the era. That's exactly what the show does, with a strong cast, an atmospheric '60s setting, and a gleefully sinister title sequence that will rattle around in your brain for hours afterwards. This is Muschietti, Skarsgård and Co playing the hits – and sometimes that's exactly what you want.

IT: Welcome to Derry is streaming on HBO Max, and on Sky Max and NOW TV in the UK, from October 26. For more, check out our guide to the best upcoming horror movies, the most exciting upcoming movies, and the best HBO Max shows.