The Boogeyman (2023) - Movie Review

After scoring two respectable hits (well, one hit and one highly divisive feature, but this is me talking, and I think they were both very good) while the industry around him was busy scrambling to deal with a once-in-a-lifetime epidemic, director Rob Savage has now stepped right into the mainstream with a Stephen King adaptation. Knowing what happened last time a promising new talent made their kick-in-the-door announcement with a King feature, I’d like to say that I’m keeping my expectations in check… but honestly, I really wanted to like this. And yeah, I do, but only like it.

Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022) - Movie Review

With how badly his last attempt at darker storytelling turned out with the woefully mishandled cop thriller The Little Things, the prospect of writer/director John Lee Hancock taking on a Stephen King adaptation is a worrying one. Films based on King’s books can be very hit or miss, and this year has already featured a particularly big miss with the Firestarter remake. But hey, it’s starring Jaeden Martell, who was a key part of one of my favourite King films with It: Chapter One; maybe this will actually work out. Well… it kinda does?

Firestarter (2022) - Movie Review

The 1984 film version of Stephen King’s Firestarter is… okay. It doesn’t reach the oft-underappreciated heights of the better movie adaptations, nor does it succumb to the amazingly goofy lows of those ‘90s TV miniseries. It mainly gets by on the personality of its cast, especially Drew Barrymore and George C. Scott, and while the treatment of its superpower-adjacent thrills was a little bland (especially compared to how bombastic King adaptations regularly get), there was enough on offer to make the whole package watchable. With how much of an upgrade more recent King adaptations have been, the idea of remaking this particular feature seemed understandable enough; there’s a lot left to work with. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was a feature that would feel this much like I’d been licking drywall for an hour and a half.

In The Tall Grass (2019) - Movie Review

Write a story about two people in a room. For the entirety of that story, these two never leave that room. There is nothing in it except for themselves. There is nothing that they can do except interact, either through basic conversation or something more… physical. There might be flashbacks to their lives before entering that room, but otherwise, this is where the story takes place. This one room with just two people in it.

Sounds boring, right? Well, it’s one of the more classic tests of great filmmaking: Take that conceit and make it interesting. And writer/director Vincenzo Natali, when he isn’t making genre flicks about bioengineered rape shenanigans (seriously, Splice is a weird movie), has made a career out of pushing that idea to its breaking point. From the theological twists of Cube to the existential dramedy Nothing, whose most memorable scenes show two people in a void of bright white nothingness, he knows how to do a lot with very little scenery. If there was any Stephen King story he'd choose to adapt, of course it’d be this one.

Doctor Sleep (2019) - Movie Review

Of all the movies to come out in 2019, including several I haven’t even gotten to yet, this is the one I was most looking forward to. Not because it’s the sequel to one of the most classic horror films of all time, although I am thankful that I rewatched it in preparation for this as I have a much better appreciation for it now than I did before. No, it’s because this is the latest feature from writer/director/editor Mike Flanagan, a filmmaker I have been shouting praise for for as long as this blog has existed.

It: Chapter Two (2019) - Movie Review

Following up It: Chapter One was always gonna be a tricky proposition. The most commercially-successful horror film of all time, a retelling that blew most if not all nostalgia for the 1990 mini-series out of the water, and just a brilliantly-constructed piece of cinema; how in the fuck is this meant to measure up to all that? Well, while I would argue that it doesn’t measure up in certain aspects, I would also argue that as a sequel, as a continuation and conclusion to what came before, this got most of the essential stuff damn near perfect.

Pet Sematary (2019) - Movie Review

While it didn’t get a lot of love back in the day (and judging by reactions to today’s film, that feeling persists), Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary is a fucking great horror flick and one of the better Stephen King adaptations. Having King himself penning the screenplay certainly helped, but as a look at how people react to grief and why it is vitally important to come to terms with that grief, it is a seriously intense ride, if an occasionally goofy one.

I’d argue the point in remaking the story in the first place, but considering the recent crop of King adaptations and their combined consistency, I’m not entirely against the idea. Hell, this one has an uncredited David Kajganich working on the script, and given how well he did with last year’s remake of Suspiria, this could turn out good. However, as I’m about to get into, this film ends up being a mish-mash of underperforming, overperforming and just outweirding the original and not all in good ways.

1922 (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Farmer Wilf (Thomas Jane) has holed up himself up in a hotel to write down a confession. In 1922, in response to his wife Arlette (Molly Parker) inheriting 100 acres of framing land, he decided to kill her and take the land for himself. However, as he and his son Henry (Dylan Schmid) try to cover up their crime from their neighbours, the weight of Wilf’s actions starts to bear down on him. In an attempt to have more, he is about to lose everything.

Gerald's Game (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) and his wife Jessie (Carla Gugino) go to a secluded lake house for a romantic weekend. However, after a bit of bedroom roleplaying goes hideously wrong, Gerald winds up dead with Jessie still handcuffed to the bed. With no-one around to help and time soon running out, she retreats into her own mind for support… and what she finds isn’t pleasant.

It (2017) - Movie Review

As we continue our look into the Stephen King adaptations for the year, we’ve come to a certain story that holds a very special place in my heart for a number of reasons. Growing up with a rather morbid and horror-loving mother, I had a lot of exposure to King’s work growing up. One such examples was the 1990 miniseries based on King’s novel It. Despite its rather glaring issues, much like most other Stephen King-based miniseries, it has a very secure place in my personal nostalgia. That connection would eventually lead to the Nostalgia Critic incident, which I have discussed on here before, where my love for the miniseries lead me to my first-ever instance of fanboy rage. I’ve had many more cases of that since then, but that was what first lit fire under me to rage out about what someone else dares to think about something I love; you’ll notice that I don’t tend to do this that much anymore.

 

And now, after a fair amount of time in production limbo, we have the first of two theatrical films based on that same story. Knowing my own love for Tim Curry’s homicidal kookiness as Pennywise, I was definitely sceptical about how it would measure up. What I was in no way prepared for was just how good this would turn out.

The Dark Tower (2017) - Movie Review

We’re going to be getting quite a few adaptations from the written horror legend Stephen King this year. I’m going to cover them as I do any other film, except I’m doing to do something a little different with these. Along with going over the individual merits of the films themselves as per usual, I’m also going to take this time to go over King’s own strengths as a writer, how they present themselves in his works, and ultimately how well these films stand up as a continuation of his ethos. And oh boy, do we have a doozy to start out with.

 

After being in development hell for many years, only truly getting off the ground thanks to everyone’s favourite hack Akiva Goldsman, to say this film hasn’t been well-received would undermine the sheer apathy that this has generated so far. Anyone who has read through my reviews for quote-unquote “boring” films in the past should know that failure to engage often ends up being a bigger sin than just being aggravating or thematic heinous. But is that truly what we get here? Let’s take our first dip in the King pool and find out.