Instead of a haunted house, what if there were a haunted city? What if the troll lurking under the bridge hid beneath the entire municipality? What if small-town America’s racial, sexual, gender and class divisions could be exploited by a billion-year-old cosmic shape-shifter that has taken the form of a child-eating clown?
These propositions are fundamental to “It,” Stephen King’s 1986 doorstopper of a horror novel, which for my money is his most frightening book. Derry is not just a setting, it’s a secondary antagonist. The real horror of “It” is that the presence of the evil entity beneath that quaint Maine town has warped the place’s inhabitants.
No one in Derry ever seems to notice when bad things happen — when outcasts are bullied, Black people tormented, L.G.B.T.Q. people bashed, women assaulted, children abused. The good people of Derry stare, dead-eyed, and do nothing. The second episode of “Welcome to Derry” conveys this pervasive sense of wrongness by fleshing out the city, with the Main Street shopping district, the Black side of town and the nearby air base all taking their turns in the spotlight. Derry feels like a real place, where real children live and grow and, frequently, vanish.
I reviewed this weekend’s It: Welcome to Derry for the New York Times. (Gift link!)
Tags: horror, It, it: welcome to derry, new york times, TV, TV reviews