SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 2, “The Thing In The Dark.” If you have not yet seen the episode (which is now available to stream with a HBO Max subscription), proceed at your own risk!
Considering how pronounced fear is as a theme in Stephen King’s IT, it would be inexcusable for any adaptation of the work to fail to be scary – but thus far, the HBO series IT: Welcome To Derry has had zero issue checking that box.The pilot that debuted earlier this week is full of true horrors, and the newly released “The Thing In The Dark” is a stunner as well. We still might be very early into the run of the show, but I don’t imagine that many will soon be forgetting the rebirth of Amanda Christine’s Ronnie Grogan or the grocery store terror experienced by Clara Stack’s Lilly Bainbridge.
Both sequences in the second episode of IT: Welcome To Derry feature a gripping combination of awesome effects and shocking performances, and I got the chance to talk about both with the young actors when I interviewed them virtually earlier this month.
Amanda Christine Recalls The Terror Of ‘The Mother Thing’
Ronnie Grogan is one of the first main characters who we meet in the series, as she is one of the last people to see Matty Clements (Miles Ekhardt) alive in the opening minutes of the pilot, but it’s really in the second episode that we get to know her. For example, her dad, Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), is a single father, and they live in an apartment with her grandmother. We also learn that Ronnie’s mom died during childbirth… which is information that is divulged in perhaps the most horrifying way possible.
In “The Thing In The Dark,” a harmless effort by the character to block out the sounds of arguing turns into a nightmare, as throwing a sheet over her head while she is in bed at night opens the door for IT to encase her in a giant womb. And as if her effort to break out weren’t stressful enough, she then has a “post-birth” confrontation with her dead mother, who blames her daughter for her death and then attempts to kill her via Vagina dentata. It’s a wild and super messy scene, and Amanda Christine breathlessly recounted all of the craziness when I asked about her experience shooting it:
It was crazy and it was definitely an experience, and it was so much fun filming with all the goo and the actual umbilical cord. They had one that they like built on me with a strap attached to me. And then they built this whole tank thing because I had to have water training for me being in the womb and stuff. So they built a tank, and I was in the water, and I had to do all this stuff in the water, which was so fun and so cool. And then pushing out!
When I spoke with IT: Welcome To Derry star Chris Chalk earlier in the month, he danced around spoilers while saying that there were scenes in the show featuring young performers that really stunned him – and I have a feeling that the rebirth of Ronnie Grogran is one of the moments that wowed him, because how could you not be wowed?
In her performance, Amanda Christine seems to be out-of-her-mind scared… but that’s just the whole “acting” thing. As gooey, gross and exhausting as it must have been, she recalls enjoying the whole experience, and she very much appreciates how the sequence adds to the depth of Ronnie as a character. She continued,
It was just a lot. It was so fun. And definitely just opening up and expressing that fear of Pennywise in the form of my mother – we call it The Mother Thing, but just my mother coming to life, and really, you know, that's a fear of mine, me losing her at childbirth. So it was definitely something that I had to dig deep in and really it was a one of a kind experience.
Ronnie lives with the traumatic question of whether or not she was responsible for the death of her mother, and that’s the exact kind of thing that IT loves to exploit. But The Mother Thing isn’t the only example of the evil entity preying on parent issues in “The Thing In The Dark.”
Clara Stack Isn’t Really A Fan Of Pickles, But She Had A Blast Shooting The Grocery Store Sequence
As far as settings for scary sequences go, Ronnie’s terror taking place in a dark bedroom is a classic. Just about all of us can relate to the experience of being young, alone, and freaked out by even the slightest sound emanating from the blackness of the night. Far less traditional is having a nice splash of horror taking place in a well-lit grocery store, but that’s another one of the great successes in IT: Welcome To Derry’s second episode.
Lilly Bainbridge’s trauma principally stems from the gruesome death of her father, who was mutilated by machinery in the local pickle bottling plant, and IT gets creative when she goes out to do some food shopping. The aisles become a maze, fellow customers quietly taunt her behind her back, the PA system drones on about creepy deals and sales – and only after all of that does she have a confrontation with her dead dad, whose pieces are in pickle jars and assembles as a creature composed of a head and intestines.
Following up Amanda Christine’s comments, Clara Stack also appreciated how the terror experienced by the character is an exposure of her rawest nerve, and she digs the intense build-up before things get super nuts:
Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, like Amanda mentioned, the grocery store kind of reflects off of one of Lily's struggles and fears throughout this, which is the loss of her dad. So getting to film that scene was really crazy. I mean, first of all, just kind of the eerie vibe of going through the grocery store and it kind of becoming a maze and the shelves closing in. I think that's super cool.
As for the truly, truly gross stuff in the sequence, Clara Stack admitted that she wasn’t a big fan of pickles prior to production (don’t be surprised that that hasn’t changed), but she was still able to have fun while shooting with all of the oogie special effects:
And then getting to the actual pickle part of it was insane. I mean, personally, I don't love pickles in real life. But it was still super fun. I mean, getting to smash the pickle jar and getting to sit in these pickles and having prosthetic intestines in my mouth and around my neck and having this like fake rubber like pickled dad head to react off of – it was all super cool. And yeah, like Amanda said, definitely a one-of-a-kind, once in a lifetime experience.
The magic of the entertainment industry!
“The Thing In The Dark” is rich with horrors, but there is still oh so much still to come on IT: Welcome To Derry, as there are still six episodes left in the debut season. Viewers will have to wait a little extra time for the next chapter because of the early Halloween premiere of the latest, but it will be airing on HBO on November 9. When it does, be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend, as I have plenty more stories to publish from my interviews with the show’s filmmakers and stars.
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