My Review of It - Welcome To Derry - The Pilot

 

Written by Jason Fuchs

Directed by Andy Muschietti 

Lilly: "We're going to get you out."

Matty: "No, you won't. You're the reason I'm in here."

HBO perfectly timed the released for this show. With less than a week to go until Halloween, it was time to see what brand of chaos was unleashed on Derry before the events of the IT movies.

The opening episode started off with Matt Clements (Miles Ekhardt). He snuck into see a movie called The Music Man and briefly encountered Ronnie Grogan (Amanda Christine) before getting into a car with a strange couple and their childen. It was a car journey that Matt ultimately wouldn't survive.

Cut to four months later and you've got the focus on several young kids who are drawn to each other because of Matt's death. There's the alien believing Phil Malkin (Jack Molloy Legault), his sister Susie (Matilda Legault) and his best friend, Jewish kid, Teddy Uris (Mikkal Karim-Fidler). Oh and there's Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack).

They've all felt the loss of Matty but while Phil was initially in denial about what happened to Matt, both Teddy and Lilly force him to face up to it. Along with Susie, they soon encountered Ronnie and a trip to the cinema at night led to an almighty bloodbath.

Every once in a while I can be surprised with how far a television show can push the gore factor and I was pretty shocked with how far this one pushed things. With the exception of Lilly and Ronnie, every other kid in that scene got absolutely slaughtered by the mutant baby. Talk about pushing the rating there.

As for the rest of the episode, there's an air force subplot involving returning Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) and Captain Pauly Russo (Rudy Mancuso). While Leroy experienced racism, he did have support from General Shaw (James Remar) but it didn't stop an incident where masked men nearly killed him over classified information. I'm sure that information will be relevant later on.

- Other actors who appeared in this first episode included Chris Chalk as Dick Halloran. Bill Skarsgard will appear as Pennywise later in the season.

- Teddy was reading comics about The Flash and Clayface, Phil was obsessed with breastfeeding, Ronnie's father was a suspect, Susie had great handwriting, Lily spent time in Juniper Hill and Matt used a pacifier when he was stressed.

- Standout music: Ya Got Trouble from the movie Matt ended up trapped in.

- Chronology: January 1962, before it moved into May. Derry, Maine of course.

The Pilot showed a hell of a lot of trouble with the lead cast on great form and top notch directing from Andy Muschietti. He's set a high bar that hopefully can be maintained for the rest of the season.

Rating: 8 out of 10