If there's a genre on television
that has been sorely lacking in depiction during the 21st century
it's horror. I realize that there've been countless series on every channel
dealing with the supernatural but let's not kid ourselves: they are everything
but scary.
To be sure much of this must be
laid at the feet of Twilight which decided to suck all the life out of
vampires and werewolves and turn into a really bad YA romance. The CW spent
much of its peak giving every possible supernatural permutation of the vampires
and turning into just another high school drama, making it clear all of them
had forgotten the lessons of Buffy and The X-Files. But Ryan
Murphy deserves his fair share of blame having spent so much of his tenure on FX
going out of his way to argue that at the end of the day, all the witches and spooky
monsters out there really just want to be loved and isn't humanity scarier than
any monster? Murphy's essentially leaned is as far as to camp as possible and
shows no signs of backing away. And don't get me starting on AMC's Walking Dead,
which has no sign of ending even after countless shows dealing with ways of
how to shoot the undead and making it clear humans are just as nasty even after
the world end.
However as horror has entered a
new renaissance in the past decade the rest of Peak TV is finally starting to
catch up with it. Mike Flanagan has spent the last several years revitalizing
the genre with brilliant limited series from The Haunting of Hill House to
Midnight Mass. Paramount Plus blessed us by taking up the mantle of Evil
from Robert and Michelle King and making the demonic and hellish look genuinely
frightening. Since partnering with Showtime we've seen them take new dramatic
leaps with the intriguing School Spirits which finally puts the
supernatural in a high school setting and genuinely makes it frightening
and the incredible Yellowjackets which among its many genres has fully
embraced Grand Guignol as much as the spirit of David Lynch. And in the last few years HBO has been making
steps to atone for its original sin which is True Blood which did
everything possible to make vampires closer to pornographic then anything
resembling Bram Stoker's vision. At the start of the decade we got the superb The
Outsider and the incredible Lovecraft County, the latter of which absolutely
should have been renewed for a second season.
Now in Welcome To Derry HBO
officially atones for forcing the world of Sookie Stackhouse on us for seven
seasons by showing us another supernatural town that is just as possessed by
evil as Bon Temps was but shows us the other side of the coin. True Blood showed
us a world of vampires and demons struggling to find acceptance in a cruel human
world. Welcome to Derry shows us a small town where the populace has,
even if they have never actively realized it, completely accepted the world of the
supernatural and all of the horrors that are associated with it – and makes it
very clear just how truly frightening it likely would be.
Last week I made the argument that
more than any other contemporary force Stephen King lay the groundwork for the
idea of the multiverse that has been dominated Marvel and DC in the theaters and TV (whether we want it to
or not) and has been playing out in Star Trek and Star Wars in a similar
fashion. I could argue that King may have invented the Easter egg before the
term had become ubiquitous but that because the movies and TV shows that have
been made are (understandably) self-contained the average viewer might be unaware
of that. TV has made attempts to try and show that world (most famously in the
Hulu series Castle Rock) but there's never been an effort like this in
TV history.
One of the reasons Andor stood
out among the multitude of Star Wars spin-offs is because it tried to do
something no previous product had ever done: what was it like to live under the
Empire and what was the cost of being part of the Rebellion? Welcome to Derry
actually asks a question that only a prequel can truly ask: what was it like
to live in one of those small towns in Maine in everyday life? IT the
novel answered that question in greater detail than any King novel ever had and
its clear that the Muschietti brothers, who gave us the most brilliant adaptation
of a Stephen King novel, clearly wanted to explore it. The first two episodes
of Welcome to Derry now answer that question – and it's genuinely
terrifying.
Pennywise was a manifestation of
the monster that lived under Derry and while both films gave a picture of how
it approached both the Losers and some of their friends and bullies, because by
necessity it had to be focused on the fight against IT in both timelines, it never
asked the question that you might wonder: what happened to all the other kids? Had they survived, would they have had similar
tails to tell? In the first two episodes set in 1962, the writers give us an
answer to that question multiple times and while the impact may diminish over
the course of the season, individually each scene is horrifying.
We see it in the opening teaser
when the first missing boy Matthew Clements (who actually was a victim of IT in
the original novel) is watching The Music Man but theater jumping. He is
spotted by Veronica Grogan (African-American in this version) but she doesn't
say anything. Matthew runs out into the highway and for reasons unknown he
wants to run away. He ends up being picked up by a friendly family who say
they're going to Portland. The youngest boy can spell anything and he starts spelling
increasing grotesque words as the car starts to drive back to Derry. Then
the pregnant mother starts to give birth as the family chants in unison with
grotesque smiles. Then a horrible, demonic baby comes out and starts flying at
Matthew – and he is never seen again.
Matthew was clearly an unpopular
child and only a few people in Derry were close to him, outsiders themselves. Teddy
Uris (clearly a relative of Stanley who has a similar date with Pennywise
twenty-eight years in the future) is obsessed with comic books and sci-fi,
which horrifies his Orthodox parents. His friends Phil and Teddy are trying to
move on; Phil's clearly obsessed with aliens and Cold War paranoia. Lily, the
only one who might have been friends with Matthew, is an outcast because her
father died in a 'freak machinery accident' (nothing's ever an accident in Derry)
and she spent time in Juniper Hill. One night Lilly hears Matthew in the
drainpipe.
This leads the children to try and
figure out what's happening to the kids in their town. Ronnie eventually
decides to bring them to the Capitol Theater and puts up the reel of The Music
Man which Lilly heard him singing in the movie. While they're watching the same section they
see Matthew in the film holding a baby. (I guarantee you'll never hear 'Trouble
in River City' the same way again'.) Matthew turns to them and tells them that
it's their fault that he ended up like this. The screen turns red and the
demonic baby comes out flying. What happens there is unclear but afterwards
Lilly is the only survivor and there is nothing but blood…but no bodies.
The second episode is more
frightening not simply because it continues with its scares but because it
makes it clear in a way the Pilot didn't just how horrible Derry really is. The most frightening scene in the episode is
not the one you might think. It comes when Charlotte Hanlon (I'll get back to
that) goes into town and decides to buy
a roast. While she's chatting with the store owner she sees a bunch of hoodlums
beating up on a young man. There are many people on the street. No one moves,
including the storekeeper. "Boys will be boys," he shrugged.
Charlotte runs out and pulls them off
him. The young man runs off and the boys follow after it. No one does anything.
Charlotte is understandably appalled by this. She doesn't know that this
typical Derry behavior.
By now the Derry police are standing
watch outside Hank Grogan's house, certain he did it because its his theater
and you know, he's colored. Chief Bowers (yes Henry's grandfather) knows he did
it but he needs evidence to arrest him. After undergoing political pressure he
hauls in Lilly and makes it clear because she went to Juniper Hill and because
she was the only survivor, well, if she doesn't make things clear, she might be
going back there. The terrified Lilly, barely 12 years old, gives in and sure
enough Hank is arrested.
And of course she ends up going back
to Juniper Hill anyway. In what is the tour de force scene of the second
episode Lilly ends up going shopping for her mother. Throughout the episode the
viewer sees (but critically Lilly doesn't) her fellow shoppers getting grins that
we know from a certain clown. It becomes clear that Pennywise is manipulating
her into a trap and while I won't give away the nature of it is a completely
accurate description of the kind of thing King's been doing on the page for
years. It doesn't end with Lilly being killed, no that's not the point. We know
what's coming.
You shouldn't get attached to any
of the young people in this series, and any fan of King knows that going in.
The names of the characters in this series are the victims of Pennywise in the
original book. The fact that they are appearing in 1962 is no doubt deliberate;
all of them were among the missing and dead in 1958 in the original.
It's clear the writers are trying to make clear that this is a pattern that
must repeat over and over again and that the citizens in Derry are letting it
happen, generation after generation.
This is clear with one of the few characters
who you know will have to survive: Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), Mike Hanlon's
grandfather in the original story. In this version of it he has brought his
wife and son Will to Derry and he is a
member of the U.S. Air Force. (This is pretty close to canon in the original
book; the Hanlon family moved to Derry because Will was serving in the military.)
Leroy is part of a special project that is being led by General Shaw (James
Remar playing another father figure who you know has darkness beneath him) The
Cuban Missile crisis is a few months away from unfolding and the U.S. military
is trying to find what they think is a weapon that can end the Cold War immediately.
This might seem a bit out of place
in the story but it's not out of place in the world of Stephen King. Fans of
him know that there is a different universe that involves a paramilitary
organization that involves the Supernatural known simply as The Shop. Around
this time in King's universe its coming into existence and will start experimenting
in the parapsychological experiments, one of which one day will produce Charlie
McGee. Considering that the military often has a vested interest in King's
small town (a lot of weird shit happens here!) all of this seems typical.
And for those of you who think
that Chris Chalk's Dick Hallorann is just the ultimate Easter egg to tying the
universe together, this is also canon. In the original novel Dick Hallorann is
in fact serving in the Derry military base at the exact same time Will Hanlon
does. I won't give the circumstances of how we know this because it may very
well involve a spoiler for what Season 1 plans to have as its climax. Suffice
to say while the writers are giving him an additional story point to be here,
in IT he is here and he already has the gifts that will make him valuable
to the Torrance family when they end up at the Overlook.
What strikes me the most daring
move of the first season (the show is scheduled to have three) is that we have
yet to see the most famous denizen of Derry Pennywise even though Bill
Skarsgard is scheduled to show up on the show. That's also pretty close to canon in the
original book. Most of the victims we see killed in various segments are
victims not of the clown but of their greatest fears. And Welcome to Derry makes it very
clear that it is being close to canon here. Teddy Uris gets a horrific reminder of what
his family has lived through by his visitation. Veronica gets a graphic
reminder of just what her greatest terror is. We've already seen that Lilly has succumbed to
it. And the series shows us over and over again what the film could only imply:
how did all these happens and no one noticed? The answer, as we learned in the
original novel is that Derry is IT.
For those of you thinking that Welcome
to Derry is doubling down on political messages to the point of stridency,
again this is not being woke but canon. The themes of racism, sexism, bullying,
homophobia and turning a blind eye to what's going on around you in the name of
some form of civic loyalty were all themes of King's original novel. They were true when King wrote the novel in 1985
and we all know they haven't gone anywhere in forty years. The writers are being incredibly faithful to
King's novel even if they aren't dealing with plot points yet. (Though based on
the description of how the series is going to unfold in this season and others,
I have faith that it's going to come soon.)
Welcome To Derry is the Stephen King adaptation
I've been waiting for my whole life, not just in television but something I've
only occasionally gotten even in the better film versions. And it does so
revitalizing the horror genre by reminding us that the things that go bump in
the night might not be more complicated than just wanting to eat you alive and
scare you to death. The fact that Bill Skarsgard is the brother of Alexander
who famously broke out as Eric on True Blood is an easter egg I truly
love even more than the references to King. A decade after that show ended with
Alexander on camera saying the supernatural were good people Bill is producing an HBO drama where his
character will use to the very same television to drive his subjects insane and
force them to do horrific acts, or else come out of the screen and eat there
still warm flesh. If that isn't another reason to hail the King, I don't know what
is.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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