Before the red balloon floated. Before the paper boat drifted. Before “Pennywise” had a name… the town of Derry was already drowning in secrets. IT: Welcome to Derry, the long-anticipated prequel to Andy Muschietti’s bloodcurdling IT saga, arrives not just as a horror film — but as an excavation of the evil that has always poisoned this cursed corner of Maine.
Set in the early 1960s, this chapter trades neon-lit jump scares for cigarette smoke, vinyl radios, and the rot hiding beneath America’s golden age. It’s a different era — but the terror is just as familiar. Directed again by Muschietti with masterful restraint, Welcome to Derry peels back the town’s facade to expose a malignant heart, pulsing in the dark — waiting.
We follow Marianne Holloway (played with grit and emotional gravity by Lily James), a sharp but wounded journalist returning to her childhood home after the brutal, unexplained death of her brother. What begins as grief spirals into obsession when she discovers his final sketches: grotesque clowns, storm drains, a town map littered with Xs. The deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes — her brother didn’t just die. He was taken.
Marianne’s only allies are a weathered librarian (Wendell Pierce, exuding quiet fear) and a ragtag group of teens caught in shared nightmares. Their visions are vivid and horrifying — a man in whiteface smiling in the dark, a red balloon tied to a missing child’s tricycle, voices whispering from the walls. There’s a primal wrongness in Derry. And it’s not staying hidden anymore.
This isn’t a film about Pennywise’s origin in the literal sense — there’s no over-explanation or CGI cosmic exposition. What Muschietti gives us instead is implication: glimpses of the monstrous inhumanity beneath his mask, a flicker of orange eyes at the end of a hallway, a shape barely visible behind warped glass. The film trusts atmosphere over gore, letting dread seep in like rising water.
Cinematographically, Welcome to Derry is stunning. The retro aesthetic captures the 1960s with unsettling precision — rotary phones, swing sets in fog, tube televisions broadcasting static-filled clown commercials that bleed into nightmare. The sound design amplifies unease with layered whispers, backwards music, and sudden silences that scream louder than any scream.
What truly elevates the film is its devotion to psychological horror. Derry itself is the monster here — a town so deeply corrupted that reality itself bends. Authority figures ignore missing children. Parents forget their names. News clippings vanish. Every building, every smile, every “normal” moment is tinged with surreal menace. You feel trapped, even in daylight.
The ensemble teen cast is superb — raw, awkward, real. Their bond doesn’t feel like nostalgia bait, but like necessity. There’s no Losers’ Club yet, but the DNA is here: the misfits, the trauma, the idea that children can see what adults refuse to. A particularly haunting subplot involves a boy with selective mutism who draws what he sees in the sewer — art that speaks louder than words, and far more terrifying.
As the climax barrels forward, the narrative pulls no punches. We’re brought face to face not just with an ancient evil, but with the complicity of silence. Derry survives not because it’s strong — but because it feeds on forgetting. On the townspeople’s willingness to look away. Welcome to Derry is less about jump scares, more about what happens when no one listens to screaming children.
And Pennywise? He’s here. Not often — but enough. Enough to make you sweat when a balloon drifts into frame. Enough to remind you that this isn’t his birth. This is his domain.
Verdict: IT: Welcome to Derry is a masterclass in slow-burn horror, blending psychological unease with supernatural malevolence. It expands the IT universe without diluting its mythos, building a legacy of fear that resonates deeper than blood. A terrifying, thoughtful meditation on evil — not just what it is, but how we let it fester.
“Before he had a name, he had a home. And it was always hungry.”
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