IT: Welcome To Derry “The Pilot”

HBO apparently thought there weren’t enough creepy supernatural clowns on the TV these days because Pennywise got his own show..sort of.

OK, to be honest, I have no idea if this is a TV show or a mini-series or what, but so far, it looks decent, and that comes mostly from subverting expectations.  There are two plotlines running through the episode as it is, one involving something about an Air Force Base where a Major Leroy Hanlon can’t get much respect because he’s black and this is 1962.  The other has some local kids looking into the disappearance of a mutual friend, those kids being Lilly Bainbridge, Teddy Uris, and Phil Malkin.  Lily lost her father in a tragic accident and is something of a social pariah.  Teddy is Jewish.  Phil is into conspiracy theories.  None of them stuck me as particularly interesting as they look into the disappearance of Matty Clements.

Matty, of course, is dead.  Pennywise got him, and though Bill Skarsgard will be reappearing as the clown at some point, right now, there’s no sign of his particular face.  Matty tries to hitchhike out of Derry, but the car that picks him up has a family in it, a father, a pregnant mother, a teenage daughter, and a boy maybe Matty’s age.  And Pennywise, he’s the whole car and all its passengers, most notably the baby the mother gives birth to, a deformed thing with wings that eventually kills Matty.

Yeah, this is IT and the world of Derry, so kids can die here.

That said, I was rather bored by the episode for stretches.  A lot of that comes from not really knowing where they are going with any of this stuff so far, but Major Hanlon is not a kid, and therefore, not someone Pennywise would normally go after.  There are some good spooky moments, such as when Teddy thinks the lampshade for his bedside table is suddenly made of screaming human faces, but if these guys are the new Losers Club, they aren’t doing much for me.

Then Pennywise kills most of them with the baby monster in a movie theater, including Phil’s kid sister Susie.  Lily survives, as does another girl, Ronnie Grogan, acting as a projectionist and the last human to see Matty alive.

Yeah, killing off most of the pseudo-Losers Club before they have a chance to do anything, that’s a bold choice I did not see coming.  It makes sense.  Pennywise targets kids.  These kids aren’t going to be beating him for all time because that’s for the Losers Club in the 80s according to this universe’s timeline.  But I think it is safe to say that killing off a number of kids who were being set up as the series protagonists, that is a bold move.  Now the show just has to prove it’s worth the boldness.