(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
In a typical teenage horror rite of passage, the first time I saw It was at a sleepover.
Tim Curry in a bright red wig and clown makeup is an image that lingered long after the lights went out. “Hiya, Georgie,” still rings in my brain when I look at a storm drain. So far, It: Welcome to Derry is keeping its Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) in the shadows, with only his signature eerie red balloons making a crystal clear appearance.
Despite this overly prolonged tease, the HBO Max prequel series embraces Pennywise’s penchant for amping up fear, with varying results. So far, It: Welcome to Derry has unleashed grotesque flying babies, supernatural umbilical cords, a bloated, cut-up pickled head in a jar, ghosts of deceased friends, and fanged teeth chomping their way toward the screen. Childbirth is a significant fixture, and yet another creepy, murderous infant makes an appearance in the latest episode.
While this birthing motif has quickly become tired, a confection of jumpscares, body horror, psychological torment, and middle school humiliation all add up to the scariest episode of the season so far. Given that fear is subjective, this grab bag of terror hits the spots in different ways, with Lilly (Clara Stack) vying for the worst experience of the week.
Not only is Lilly dealing with the constant threat of being shipped back to the Juniper Hill Asylum, but the ultra-mean girl clique, the Pattycakes, has picked her as their latest bullying victim. At times, it is hard to tell which fate is more chilling.
Lilly is an easy target. Her dad died in a freak accident (fell into a machine at the pickle factory and got sliced to pieces), leading to a stay at the psychiatric hospital. Former BFF Marge (Matilda Lawler) is a Pattycake, whose desperation to impress Patty (Maya McNair) leads to a cruel scheme to humiliate Lilly publicly. Hasn’t this girl been through enough?
One of the areas in which Stephen King’s stories excel is showcasing that ghosts, ghouls, and spirits are far from the only monsters we face. Social hierarchy and insecurities are a minefield that doesn’t require a bump from the killer clown; adolescence is a nightmare even without Pennywise creating havoc.
So when Marge (who has been sharing looks with Patty during class) asks Lilly to have lunch under the guise of renewing their friendship, I automatically sank into my seat.
The ruse is to get Lilly to talk to Tim, a Letterman-jacket-wearing popular jock. Marge gasses Lily up, suggesting that Tim is crushing on Lilly. It is a rare moment of hope and frivolity for the girl who has recently witnessed the brutal slaying of three friends—not to mention the deep-rooted trauma connected to her father’s untimely end.
Lilly wants to freshen up before she makes the move to say hi to Tim, giving Marge a window to confess her betrayal while Lilly frets about an ill-timed zit. A school bathroom is another horror favorite, with It: Welcome to Derry embracing this hallowed setting. But it isn’t Lilly who is about to experience a shock.
By this point in the series, science nerd Will (Blake Cameron James) has deduced that Pennywise feeds on fear. To give them a fighting chance, Lilly has swiped some pills from her mother’s purse. What is likely Valium (aka “Mother’s Little Helpers”) almost gets tested when Lilly realizes Marge is experiencing something otherworldly in the bathroom. I did wince when Lilly dropped the pill and tried to fish it out of the bowl because that is also a nightmare scenario. No one wants a benzo soaked in toilet water.
On the other side of the stall door, Lawler is giving the kind of teary performance that made her the breakout star of HBO’s hidden gem Station Eleven. Tears start to fall as Marge begins to confess to the Pattycakes’ plan. She gets interrupted when her watery eyes go from bloodshot to CGI silliness in a matter of seconds.
Marge is caught in Pennywise’s orbit, and biology class provides the fuel. This school loves showing films to freak out students, such as the unnerving “Duck and Cover” atomic bomb PSAs. However, Bert the Turtle isn’t the one who springs to life; another short film inspires. Marge is, understandably, visibly repulsed when her teacher describes how a parasite burrows into the eyes of land snails, causing the storks to swell before a bird plucks them out.
What happens next is an excellent example of how It: Welcome to Derry relies too much on outlandish visuals when the practical effects are enough to make me hide behind my hands.
I can’t help but roll my own eyes when Marge’s bulge into the same cone-like shape as the infected snails. While Lilly struggles to unlock the bathroom stall, Marge staggers to the woodwork room to fix her issue. By fix, I mean cut out. While the cones look silly, the moment Marge grabs a flat chisel, I recoiled. When this doesn’t do the trick, Marge turns on the bandsaw, slicing off the offending growth and slipping on excessive blood pouring from the sockets. Lilly arrives just as Marge starts hacking at her eye again with the chisel; the prosthetic is far more disturbing and visceral.
Being a good friend, Lilly climbs on top of Marge to wrestle the chisel away. But all the screaming has drawn a crowd, and it looks like the now blood-soaked Lilly attacked Marge. The shock turn of events saves Lilly from one type of public humiliation. Still, her lunatic reputation grows. Lilly is likely about to get another stint at Juniper Hill.
While I’d put this mix of reality and grotesque body horror as the scariest moment of the week, the biggest jumpscare is when Will gets dragged underwater while fishing by a haunting figure that resembles his dad, Leroy (Jovan Adepo).
Will bears physical wounds on his arms, proving something grabbed him. “There’s something here, in Derry. Something bad,” Will ominously says. Cue the red balloon floating by unaided. Later, Leroy sees another red balloon stuck in the tree where Will said someone was watching him. The series edges closer to a Pennywise reveal, and pairing it with the red balloon does raise the hairs on the back of my neck. But it is the terrors of adolescence that remain the scariest.
