It: Bienvenidos a Derry

I had high hopes for this series and hope it gets better. I'm not sure if it's meant to be scary but the visual effects just aren't doing it for me. It's comical at times when it's not mean to be?

I will hold out that the series gets better but right now I'm struggling to get into it. I want to clarify I haven't watched any of the IT movies, so it's my first intro to this franchise.

It borrows a lot from the IT movies that came before, which makes it look cheap and tacky. These kids feel like Temu versions of the original kids. Two main boys in this episode are just knockoffs of Richie and Stanley from the original movie. The only good thing is production quality the rest is kinda "meh" and the acting is not good. It's not really scary or creepy it just feels random and considering the runtime is almost 55 minutes, the story seems slow. As a pilot it's meant to hook people and I'm personally not, but the series might get better.

My verdict after episode 4:

Mostly terrible acting, boring dialogue writing, very bad CGI... There are so many issues with this show: It's not scary, there is almost no tension and most of the characters are not interesting to watch - It's easier for me to mention the stuff I like than to mention all the flaws...

There is one scene where the editor did a great job with cutting to the sound of people clapping, there was something really unexpected happening in the first two episodes that I am not going to mention for spoiler reasons and a small storyline involving someone's parent was pretty dramatic in the first few episodes. There is also one semi-cool shocking moment in the middle of the season. But that's basically it - and even in the good moments the terrible CGI ruins it a bit.

Another big problem is that a huge part of the show just feels like a retelling of the movie - but like a much less good version of it.

In addition to all that stuff I got the impression that the show kinda breaks a part of the Derry/Pennywise logic early on - and not in a good way: After the first two episodes I no longer understood why the Pennywise character from the movies would not take easier ways to get his food - he seems a bit more powerful in this series.

I'm three episodes in, and honestly, if this wasn't an HBO show, people would be tearing it apart. The effects are awful, the pacing is dead slow, and there's nothing remotely scary.

It's like It lost its bite and decided to mope around instead. I'll keep watching, but only because I clearly hate myself.

I have to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of horror movies, not because I'm scared I just don't find them nearly as interesting as others do. I'm not saying that I don't like them, I just prefer other genres more, so I wasn't as excited about It: Welcome to Derry as others were. I have seen the recent It movies and thought they were pretty good, especially Bill Skarsgård. I'm glad they brought him back for this series because he's once again the best part of the show. It's gotten good reviews and currently has a 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience however have given it mixed reviews. I'm more on the side of not liking it than not. Maybe that's because I didn't have huge expectations or know much about the book.