I don’t know if I can fairly judge IT: Welcome to Derry because I was extremely distracted by things that had nothing to do with it for half to a third of the episodes. Does it say something about the show that it failed to distract me from my distractions? Probably not. Getting into a political argument with a friend and ordering Doordash to the wrong address is extremely distracting. I saw enough of the show, however, to have no desire to revisit any of it, so these thoughts are as close to a review as I’ll get.
IT: Welcome to Derry is reminiscent of Stranger Things in that it features a cast of kids and adults in a seemingly normal town until they become entangled in supernatural events. Welcome to Derry, however, takes place in the 50s instead of the 80s, so it doesn’t have the charming nostalgia. In fact, as with other media that takes place in the 50s–such as the Bioshock video games… and Stranger Things–the 50s-theme is instead used to create a creepy, horrific atmosphere. Additionally, while Stranger Things preserves the lives of its cast, Welcome to Derry begins violently murdering and maiming its child characters within the first episode.
Sure, Welcome to Derry is a horror series. I should have expected everything to be gross, horrific, and creepy, and comparing it to Stranger Things, an adventure series, isn’t fair. Still, I didn’t find the horror elements conducive to sympathizing or bonding with the kids or wider cast. It felt like it wanted to be a Stranger Things with a cast that could endure for eight episodes and beyond, but it was also obligated to kill its characters and disgust its audience. Maybe it wasn’t for me, or maybe while I was distracted I missed the good bits.
Shows like Dark, Welcome to Derry, and Stranger Things have evoked the nostalgia of the 50s and the 80s. What someone really needs to do is make a show about the good old days of the mid-2000s when the Internet and technology was young but fun. That seems like prime real estate to piggyback off the popularity of Stranger Things!