The Argentine director Andy Muschietti has been involved with the universe Item since he embarked on the adaptation of the famous novel by Stephen King in two volumes, released between 2017 and 2019.
If those two authentic horror fairs were already hallucinatory and ‘psychotronics’even more so is the first episode of It: Welcome to Derrywhich is added as a ‘prequel’ to its predecessors, maintaining the same spirit gallant heir of the ‘Grand Guignol and becoming one of the most terrifying proposals that have been made for recent television, since it has the courage to move away from the mechanisms and clichés within the genre to go one step further by betting on terror in its purest form.
Because what it is about here is absolutely respecting the teacher’s legacy Stephen King, of course, (introducing all his signature tropes) but, at the same time, becoming a gore festival that leaves your mouth open in each of the grotesque ‘set-pieces’ that compose it, especially the one that opens and closes the first chapter.
Muschietti plays with the elements again, and also plays with an extreme proposal that combines black humor, supernatural elements and social criticism to expand the mythology of the famous clown Pennywise and explores the origins of evil in the fictional town of Derry.
The series, conceived by Andy and Barbara Muschietti next to Jason Fuchs and Brad Kaneis located in 1962in the middle of the Cold War, and narrates the arrival of the commander Hanlon (performed by Jovan Adepo) and his family to Derry, an enclave marked by nuclear paranoia and racial discrimination, perfect for the creation of monsters, both real and fictional.
The narrative of It: Welcome to Derry revolves around the disappearance of Matty Clements (Miles Eckhardt), a child last seen after attending a screening of the musical Live of illusion (attention to the use of the film and one of its songs).
His companions, Teddy (Mikkal Karim-Fidler), Phil (Jack Molloy Legault), Lilly (Clara Stack) and Ronnie (Amanda Christine), they will be involved in a series of strange phenomena (remember that the entity is capable of distorting reality to enter the personal traumas of the protagonists and make them come true) that will push them to investigate the mystery.
Teenagers, caught between childhood and adulthood, find themselves in a stage of constant confusion where literally no one understands them. Not even themselves. Nor will everything that happens to them contribute, precisely, to improving their situation, in which we find school bullyingrepressive families and all that oppressive atmosphere that King has been disseminating with regard to his pre-adolescent characters, punished by the adult world and who are responsible for being the recipients of their complexes and miseries.
The first episode, directed by Andy Muschietti, condenses all the imagery that the author himself had previously constructed, but is not afraid to up the ante and offer a terrifying show as unexpected as it is shocking in which practically everything will be blown up with the emergence of a creature eager for blood.
The series maintains the aesthetics and tone of the previous film adaptations, with production design by Paul Denham Austerberry and the participation of the usual Muschietti technical team.
Andy Muschietti has stated that each episode is a movie and that it is filmed the way he always shoots. This visual and narrative continuity reinforces the connection with the cinematographic biology, although the series delves into unexplored territories of King’s universe.
According to the creator, the original book already had a lot of fragmented information that gave clues to issues that had not been addressed, including the origin of the It entity, which could date back to three million years in the past.
The structure of the series would be conceived as a trilogy, with each season going back 27 years in time, in line with the cycle of appearances of the entity in the original novel. The following seasons would take place in 1935 and in 1908.
The project has the explicit support of Stephen King, who, according to Barbara Muschietti, supported them one hundred percent. This endorsement has allowed the creators to expand the universe of Item with creative freedom, addressing both the supernatural aspects and the social realities that underlie the original work.
