IT: Welcome to Derry Review – Fear, Nostalgia, and Pennywise’s Shadow
This isn’t just another horror prequel. It’s the beginning of fear, memory, and something ancient waking up
IT: Welcome to Derry Review Quick Take: Welcome to Derry feels like returning to a nightmare you convinced yourself you outgrew. It’s nostalgic, uneasy, and deeply weird horror that breathes slow, waits, then smiles like it knows your childhood secrets.
IT: Welcome to Derry Review – Fear, Nostalgia, and Pennywise’s Shadow
Some shows don’t ease you in. They stalk you first. They watch you remember. IT: Welcome to Derry feels like that kind of horror. A familiar nightmare returning, except older, stranger and meaner. And I’ll be honest. Going into this series I expected another cash grab prequel that tries to feed off nostalgia and Stephen King’s legacy. But two episodes in and my IT: Welcome to Derry Review is already more complicated than that.
This isn’t just a story about clowns or missing kids. It feels like the anatomy of fear. The kind you inherit. The kind you pretend isn’t there even when it sits beside you.
A Horror Story That Remembers Its Roots
There’s something almost affectionate about how Welcome to Derry handles its own lore. Not subtle, but not tacky either. The show remembers the IT universe and the cinematic language that shaped it. The pipes. The drains. The eerie children’s rhymes. The impossible geometry of nightmares.
But here is the surprising part. There is no Pennywise yet. No iconic smile. No balloon floating ominously in frame. Instead there is a feeling. A pressure. Like the clown is watching from the rafters waiting for the right moment to blink into existence.
Right now the horror feels subtle and looming, not loud or chaotic. And honestly I like that. I want the dread to sit with me a bit longer.
Fear Is a Character Here
The horror in IT: Welcome to Derry does not arrive with jump scares or loud chaos. Instead, it settles into the bones of the story. The first two episodes build fear slowly in a way that feels intentional, intimate and unsettling. The show seems less interested in shocking the audience and more focused on letting dread sink in until it feels lived in.
One of the earliest scenes that struck me was the moment in the car with Matty and the family. It begins playful and harmless, almost sweet, before twisting into something grotesque. The spelling game becomes darker and more frantic, and by the time the deformed infant appears, the scene feels both surreal and inevitable. The horror does not feel random. It feels like Derry recognizing one of its own.
The bathroom scene with Lily and the drain felt like a quiet acknowledgment of IT lore without leaning on nostalgia as a crutch. The singing voice, the slow build, the finger pushing up through the drain. That moment reminded me of the original story, but with enough difference to feel new. The familiarity makes the audience tense before anything actually happens.
Across both episodes, the horror feels deeply personal. The fear grows from buried trauma, family wounds and unspoken memories. Veronica’s unraveling home life, Lily’s grief and the brutal disappearance of their friends are not just isolated events. They seem connected, as if something in Derry is studying them. Not attacking, but testing. Almost like it is waiting for them to break.
There is a sense that whatever is waking up has been here far longer than the characters realize. The children are not just unlucky. They are chosen. And the most terrifying part is that they do not know why.
Characters Carved Out of Memory and Fear
Two episodes in and I am already invested in the characters more than I expected. Lily and Veronica’s fractured friendship feels important. The guilt. The anger. The shared trauma. They aren’t just dealing with supernatural horror. They are dealing with the grief of being children in a world that doesn’t believe them until it is too late.
And then there is Leroy. The mystery around the military experiments and what exactly they unearthed feels like a thread that could either unravel everything or ground the supernatural horror in something even more sinister. Because if fear is being studied, harvested or weaponized then Pennywise isn’t the beginning. He’s the result.
The Mood: Equal Parts Nostalgia and Unease
There is also a strange playfulness woven into the horror. A grotesque imagination that borders on absurdity while still feeling threatening.
That tone feels intentional. This story knows it is playing with legacy. It knows the audience remembers the old IT. The miniseries. The remakes. The trauma. The floating balloons. The red that stains memory.
Welcome to Derry isn’t relying on jump scares or cheap shock. The horror so far is:
- Atmospheric
- Visual
- Psychological
and most of all uncomfortable. Right now this feels less like a clown story and more like a history of terror. Pennywise is coming but the town is already sick.
Final Thoughts So Far
My Welcome to Derry Review at this early stage is simple.
I’m intrigued.
I’m unsettled.
I’m not sure where this is going but I want to follow it.
It feels respectful to the source material but bold enough to do something new. There is enough horror to satisfy long time fans and enough mystery to pull new ones in.
If the next episodes continue to build the tension and finally unleash Pennywise in a way that feels earned, this could become something memorable.
Until then, I’ll watch with the same mix of dread and excitement I had as a kid hearing about IT second hand through my aunt’s whispered stories and warnings.
If you like dark slow burn horror, you might also enjoy:
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