When The Devil Rides Out arrived from Scream Factory over two months ago I threw it in the "pile", because I thought I had seen it already. But when looking for something to put on a few nights back when it was late but I wasn't tired enough to go to bed, I read the synopsis said "Hmm I don't remember this at all?", and only then did I realize I was thinking of To The Devil A Daughter, the OTHER Hammer movie with Christopher Lee based on a Dennis Wheatley novel. That one I did see, and it's an OK enough movie (per my nearly eight year old review, it's a bit dull and the central mystery doesn't work very well), but this one turned out to be a total delight to me, so I'm happy I picked it out of the ever increasing number of movies in/around that overflowing box next to my couch where all the random screeners and trivia winnings go in hopes of becoming an FTP review someday.
In fact I liked it enough to read the book to compare for a future Collins' Crypt piece, so I won't use up all of my thoughts on the film here. But I will say that a big part of why I liked it was that Lee was not playing the cult leader - he was actually the hero for a change, one of two older men who were trying to save their pal from the satanic cult he had joined. But he doesn't do much action heroics; he leaves that to Leon Greene as the other (younger) guy. Instead, Lee hilariously smirks his way through the film's thoroughly enjoyable opening sequence, where the two men visit their pal at his home unannounced, on the night where his cult has gathered under the guise of an astronomy meeting. Lee knows damn well the guy's mixed up with satanists, but he plays along with the ruse, marveling at his friend's newly redecorated floor (satanic symbols) and such. Honestly I could watch an entire movie of this stuff, sans any horror at all.
Luckily, those elements work well, too. Since Lee is usually a villain and is occasionally vague about certain things (he gives Greene some chemically based protections, but says he has "other protections" without divulging what they are), I spent a good chunk of the movie thinking he was merely pretending to be a hero but in reality trying to build Greene's character up as an eventual sacrifice or something. So that adds a layer of intrigue that for all I know was never intended by the novel or script (adapted by Richard Matheson), and the direct/obvious horror stuff is pretty successful to boot. Late in the film, our heroes have to endure a ritual and fight off the temptations of the black magic, which reminded me of A Dark Song (something no less an authority than Kim Newman points out on an interview, making me feel a bit proud for having noticed it), another strong sequence. The effects aren't that great (Lee hilariously trashes them on the commentary) but the general ideas come across just fine, and the unusual three male hero setup (Lee, Greene, and the guy they were trying to save, played by Patrick Mower) adds much suspense as you're pretty sure one of them will probably die, but who?
The villain is played by Charles Gray (yep, two future Bond villains square off in this!), quite possibly the most sinister looking man alive. Sadly he is kind of sidelined for big chunks, focusing on Lee and Greene's attempts to free their pal (plus Greene's love interest, played by Nike Arrighi) instead of whatever the cult folk are doing in between their sacrifices. But he casts a long shadow even when he's not on screen and gets some great bits, including a hypnosis scene and a climactic scene where he nonchalantly plans to sacrifice a child. Perhaps Wheatley's book has more for him to do (it's 300 pages in very tiny font size, and the movie is only 95 minutes, so obviously they had to excise a lot), though if there's a direct confrontation between his character and Lee's I'll be disappointed it wasn't filmed, as the men rarely interact directly (Greene gets to punch him out though).
Scream's blu is packed, of course; the Lee commentary (shared with Sarah Lawson and a moderator) is older, along with a few old making of specials, but there's a new track with historians Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr, plus Newman's interview and another exclusive one with Jonathan Riby. And the film has a new transfer, which looked quite good though of course I can't compare it to any previous releases (it appears to be the first Blu-ray release in the US, with an Anchor Bay DVD being long out of print). They have a few more Hammer movies on the way (including Rasputin, which this one was paired with on the Anchor Bay DVD) so I hope it's a sign they are being diligent about acquiring as many as they can - sure, there are some duds in that mix, but I'll sit through a few chores like The Reptile if it means occasionally getting a real treat like this.
When Michael Crichton wrote The Lost World in 1995, he made the unusual choice to write it as a sequel to Jurassic Park, the film, as opposed to his novel, as Spielberg allowed Ian Malcolm to live whereas he was killed in the original text. Crichton waved away the discrepancy with a half-assed explanation of Malcolm being revived, and the resulting film was able to use the same basic plot of the novel (with some big differences), thanks to Crichton essentially saying the movie version of Jurassic Park was canon, not his own novel. Well, I haven't read Doctor Sleep, but I wouldn't need to in order to correctly assume that Stephen King made no such concession for Stanley Kubrick's version of the events of The Shining, leaving Mike Flanagan in the unenviable position to adapt King's sequel novel (published in 2013) in a way that honored the text but also the iconic Kubrick film that - let's be honest - is the version more people would know nowadays.
And no, that's not me dismissing the book or its own popularity: it's still huge and it holds up quite well (I re-read it earlier this year, in fact), and while it's not my favorite King novel, it is certainly one of his most essential. But in pop culture, the mental image of The Shining is Jack Nicholson saying "Here's Johnny!", it's the hedge maze, it's that damn (overused, now) carpet pattern, etc - all things that are specific to Kubrick's take on the material, which King has famously and repeatedly criticized over the years (me personally? I quite like both versions, though I agree Jack being nuts from the beginning does hurt the story of the movie itself, not just compared to the novel). The best compliment he's ever afforded it, until recently, is that it's a good horror movie but a terrible adaptation, and so his Doctor Sleep novel didn't pay it any mind; it takes place in a world where the Overlook had burned to the ground and Dick Halloran was still alive.
How Flanagan gets around these discrepancies is part of the fun of his film, so I won't get into them all. And in fact, I CAN'T, since again I haven't read it and thus cannot speak for every change or "blend" Flanagan makes in the movie version. All I know is from what I learned on the book's synopsis on the wiki page, and I can sum up with "he keeps the basic plot but changes things as necessary to fit within the Kubrick order of events". For example Dick is indeed accounted for, but as a ghost that acts as a sort of conscience for Danny (Ewan McGregor) as opposed to a living human being as he was in the novel, and (spoiler for those who haven't seen the trailer) while the book climax took place on the grounds where the Overlook once stood, Ewan is able to walk around and revisit all those classic spots: the elevator that gets flooded with blood, the axe-damaged door, etc.
It's an interesting approach, but I ultimately can't help but wonder if Flanagan would have ended up with an even stronger film had he just gone with one or the other instead of trying to serve both masters. From what I understand, Doctor Sleep is not one of King's best works (though that might be due to enhanced expectations for following up one of his masterpieces more than the quality of the book itself), but the plot is quite interesting: a grown up Danny, now fighting his own demons (i.e. booze) has his "Shining" reignited by a young girl named Abra who also shines and has drawn the attention of a group of, well, vampires of a sort, ones who find shiners and feed on their "steam" (think of it as the midichlorians to the Force, easy enough with Ewan around!). Children tend to provide better "steam" as they haven't used up their powers or allowed them to become tainted by the drudgery of the world, they only go after youngsters, so the girl is rightfully terrified and reaches out to Danny to help her. Can he overcome his demons and his own horrific past to stop these monsters?
Well, if you got two and a half hours, you'll find out. I must admit, while the length (only a few minutes longer than the original Shining film, in fact - and certainly shorter than the King-approved miniseries version) didn't scare me off when I heard it, I found the film a bit overstuffed, and couldn't help but wonder if some of its subplots/characters couldn't have been streamlined. It doesn't help that the trailer (again, spoiler if you haven't seen the marketing) sells the movie on "Danny returns to the Overlook" and that doesn't happen until the final 20 minutes or so, meaning you're spending two hours and change on what feels like a lot of pieces being put into place. We have to meet the "True Knot", the name given to the vampire-like villains and see how they operate, we have to catch up with Danny, we have to meet Abra and see her whole deal, etc, etc. And Flanagan tries to give them all equal balance, so the movie feels like it lacks momentum at times, as we cut from Danny getting a new job to the vampires getting a new recruit to Abra trying to block out the sounds of her schoolmates' thoughts, and then back to Danny working his OTHER job (yes, he has two), and so on - it's about an hour in before their worlds start to collide.
And not for nothing, but the completely recast group keeps it from feeling like a sequel the way it might on paper - Ewan is terrific but I never quite bought him as the grown up version of that kid I've watched race around the Overlook hallways so many times. The other returning characters are played by essential look-alikes, and with one exception they are quite good/not distracting, but they're also minimal presences in the film - it's mostly a Danny we don't recognize interacting with entirely new characters, so it lacks that "it's nice to catch up with them" element that can allow something like Force Awakens or Halloween '18 to dilly dally a bit. Hell it barely even feels like a horror movie for the most part, and Flanagan has seemingly toned down some of the story's more supernatural elements - something in the book that is accomplished with shining powers is done with a shootout here.
That said, there is one horrific sequence that is downright disturbing to watch, when the True Knot tortures a young boy before murdering him (pain causes better "steam", apparently). The kid's cries for help are downright gutwrenching, far more than anything in either of the It movies - I've been pretty good lately with my "Now that I'm a dad I get bothered easily" issues but this ramped them right back up again. And it's made "worse" by the casting of Rebecca Ferguson as Rose, the leader of the True Knot, because she's such an inviting presence (this is a woman who has stolen two Mission Impossible movies away from Tom Cruise, mind you) that you're not in any rush for her to be killed or imprisoned for her crimes - she's so captivating I almost wish the movie had just focused on her entirely at times, taking a sort of Lost Boys/Near Dark kind of approach where they attempt to recruit Danny (or Abra) into their number and after a while he decides he wants to break free from them, if only so we didn't have to go stretches without seeing her (or her crew, which for the most part is left underdeveloped) and allowed them to interact before the two hour mark.
Luckily, the dramatic elements work well, so I also found myself wishing that the movie was stripped of its supernatural elements entirety and just focused on the survivor of a horrific event (his father trying to murder him in a snowbound hotel) trying to put his life back together. Again, McGregor is quite great in the role, and I was quite taken with his scenes of hitting rock bottom (a brief drunken hookup has a horrific outcome) going to AA meetings, working as an orderly in an old folks' home, etc. It's very much in line with Flanagan's Hill House series, which also wasn't afraid to put the scary stuff on the sideline for a while in order to work on character development and drama - I just think he found a better balance there than he did here. There's nothing particularly bad or even "just OK" about any one element* in the film - it just never really congeals as a full narrative until it's almost over.
Because of that I suspect I'll like it more on a second viewing, and perhaps with a reading of the book in between. Those who did read it already seem to agree Flanagan improved on it, so perhaps I did myself a disservice going in so blind - they were prepared for its somewhat wobbly structure, whereas I barely even knew what it was about. Flanagan gets a lot right: the casting (a lot of his regulars, plus welcome additions like Ferguson, Cliff Curtis as Danny's best friend, and Jocelin Donahue as Abra's mom), the recreated Overlook, the music, etc, and it's gotta be worth something that I didn't doze off even for a second despite feeling tired during the trailers. The filmmaker has yet to disappoint me, but he's not God - perhaps there's only so much he can do when trying to live up to forty years of our love of The Shining, through an adaptation of a book that by most accounts was a bit of a letdown. Ultimately it's one of those movies where I feel guilty for not liking it more, because there's so much to enjoy/appreciate but it also lacks that je ne sais quoi that sends me racing to social media to encourage everyone to see it.
What say you?
*OK, there is one that's kind of bad, but it requires spoilers, so I'll just be vague and say it involves one of Flanagan's regular actors showing up at a crucial moment during the third act. On paper it was probably fine, but on-screen... sorry, it just didn't work. People were full on laughing at it, and it wasn't supposed to be funny. It's quick, thankfully, but it definitely damages the climax a touch.
Should movies do away with opening credits, and let people watch them "blind" (granted, the internet and the like would have already revealed the same information, but let's pretend) so that the movie can be judged on its own merits without the big names behind the camera adjust their expectations or biases? It could only help Two Evil Eyes, a film that's perfectly fine and easy enough to recommend to those who enjoy Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and/or anthology style films, but unfortunately doesn't come close to living up to the potential established by its opening titles, which tell you it's from George Romero and Dario Argento. The only other movie that can boast a partnership between these two titans of horror cinema is Dawn of the Dead, aka one of the greatest horror films of all time. Two Evil Eyes, on the other hand, might not even be one of the best horror films of 1990.
Hell, it's not even the best Romero-related film of 1990, as he wrote a segment of Tales From The Darkside as well as the script for Tom Savini's Night of the Living Dead remake, both of which are superior. And he doubles down on reminding us of his legacy by populating his segment with a number of actors from Creepshow, which will likely leave audiences wondering why this film didn't follow suit and have four or five tales that ran shorter instead of two that run about an hour (with no framing device). To be fair, that was indeed the original plan: Romero and Argento were originally going to be joined by John Carpenter and Wes Craven, but when their other commitments got in the way and dropped out, the two men decided to just split the film in half, though why they never decided to add some kind of framework or "host" is beyond me.
So it makes for a strange viewing experience - the closest example would be Grindhouse, I guess, but at least that offered two complete features, plus the fake trailers to sell you on the overall "double feature" experience. There's no such frills here; the movie starts with Romero's "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar", then shifts to Argento's "The Black Cat" without any segue or intermission. And while I suppose it's possible some people prefer Romero's, the vast majority agree that Argento's segment is superior, so to sit down and watch this as a movie means you wait an hour for it to get good, or skip past it entirely to get what amounts to a Masters of Horror episode length experience that will leave you unfulfilled if "watching a movie" was your plan for the evening. There's not even any real connection between the two to make it fun; I was hoping some supporting characters would appear in both segments (both take place in contemporary Pittsburgh), but no dice.
Anyway, as I mentioned "Valdemar" isn't exactly up there with the best of Romero's work, which makes sense when you learn on the bonus features that his heart wasn't really in it (Romero wanted to do "Masque of the Red Death" but his ideas proved to be too costly for the production, forcing him to find a different story). "Valdemar" is a strange consolation choice; the original story doesn't have much of a plot, so Romero invented one around the basic idea of a guy caught in a limbo between life and death thanks to a form of hypnotism called mesmerism. Unfortunately, his story isn't all that exciting or unique: it's the ten billionth "woman and her lover kill her husband to get his money" tale, one you could have seen - in half the time - in any number of episodes of HBO's Tales From The Crypt series, which had debuted the year before and was becoming a minor powerhouse for the genre. It picks up in its final 10 minutes (mostly thanks to Tom Atkins showing up as a cigar chomping cop) but by then it's too late to save this from becoming one of Romero's least interesting productions.
Luckily, Argento's fares much better, to the extent that I wish they simply turned his into a traditional feature sans Romero at all (except for maybe as producer). In fact it's a bit longer than Romero's segment as is, so it'd only take another 15-20 minutes' worth of footage to qualify as a feature, which they could have easily added in without really padding things since it has a rather underdeveloped subplot about a local serial killer (played by Savini himself, another Dawn holdover that might enhance your expectations for the film) and a somewhat rushed climax, as if they were making sure the film didn't cross the two hour mark (it comes in literally seconds under, in fact). And it benefits from a better story; Argento updated Poe's classic tale for a modern setting, changing the protagonist into a crime scene photographer - allowing him to work in other Poe references, such as a "Pit and the Pendulum" inspired murder scene - but otherwise stuck fairly close to the narrative Poe wrote nearly 150 years prior.
Plus it's fun to see Harvey Keitel going through the horror movie motions, as he didn't exactly dive into the genre all that often. And he's one of those guys who never phones anything in, so he's fully committed as the drunken asshole murderer who repeatedly kills a cat (and others along the way), but taking it seriously instead of hamming it up - it's a great performance from an actor who I wish embraced the genre more often. And Argento clearly didn't have trouble adapting to working in America - it's got a number of his nutty camera shots (a falling key being one notable example), splatter, and out of nowhere plot turns - come for the contemporary Pittsburgh setting, stay for the nightmare scene set in medieval times! Any fan of the filmmaker can tell you that his decline was about to start, so having missed the film for so long it was great to see "new" Argento that more or less lived up to his talents, before declining budgets and changing studio politics forever handcuffed his abilities, resulting in sub-par efforts.
However you feel about the film, it's inarguable that Blue Underground has put together a fantastic package for it, starting with a new transfer that looked pretty fantastic to my eyes (though I have nothing to compare it to, having never seen it before) and a mother lode of bonus features old and new that require their own disc. The film was previously released on special edition DVD, and it seems they have carried over all of those supplements (including interviews with Romero and Argento) while adding several new ones, including interviews with Madeline Potter (who plays Annabel, Keitel's wife) and composer Pino Donaggio and a very fresh commentary by Argento biographer Troy Howarth, which must have been recorded in the past few months as he notes the death of actor Bingo O'Malley (Valdemar), who only died in June. He's perhaps a bit too enthusiastic about Argento's segment, claiming it's among his best work, but he gives plenty of background on the production, the two filmmakers' careers as a whole, actor bios, etc - he barely ever stops to breathe. The limited edition release also includes Donaggio's score on CD as well as a booklet with an essay by the great Michael Gingold, so if you plan to go through everything on the set, you best take a day out of work.
Ultimately, it was an intriguing and noble experiment that didn't quite stick the landing due to the compromises on participants (a TV show concept was even floated, which would include American AND Italian maestros contributing episodes) and - in Romero's case - story selection, but is still worth a watch thanks to Argento's segment and the sheer novelty of the whole thing. Plus, if you've followed the careers of its two directors, you'd know that this was at the end of their glory years - Romero would only make five more films over the next 27 years until his death, none of them exactly great, while Argento would make one more attempt at breaking into American filmmaking with Trauma before going back to Italy and doing what he could with their own declining film business. Maybe the film itself isn't a classic, but it's from a time when that was still a possible outcome for these masters.
I've revisited the 2017 It a couple times since my theatrical experience, and realized along the way that the real MVP here was the casting agent. The kids are all so good in the roles, it more than makes up for the movie's faults (some dodgy FX, a repetitive middle section), and keeps it rewatchable long after its ability to scare has worn off. It's almost like a hangout movie as opposed to a horror movie; I'd almost rather watch the kids go swimming and ride their bikes than fight the evil clown. And the tradition continues here in It Chapter Two; in addition to the kids all returning (some noticeably aged for scenes that are supposedly taking place during the original's events), the adult cast is largely terrific as well, and whenever I found myself sighing or even rolling my eyes at some of the script's decisions, I'd be instantly back on board whenever it got back to letting these performers bounce off each other.
You should all know the story by now: It, most commonly in the form of Pennywise the clown (Bill Skarsgård returns as well, naturally) returns to Derry every 27 years, and while the kids did a good job of putting him in his place and maybe having him go back to his hole a bit early, they didn't actually kill him at the end of the first film. Well it's 27 years later, and the murders have started again, prompting Mike (Isaiah Mustafa, a standout) to call his fellow Losers - all of whom moved away, unlike him - and cash in on their promise to come back if it ever returned. All but one of them do (the marketing has made zero attempt to hide this, so don't give me any "spoiler" shit), and the fun begins again.
While the book and original miniseries started in this present day and filled in the kids' part of the story via flashbacks, the 2017 film didn't have as much of a hint of the adult stuff - apart from the "Chapter One" title (which it only got at the end), there was nothing to suggest it wasn't a standalone story. And that worked perfectly there, but here it's slightly odd that the adult characters reunite literally moments after we've first seen Bill Hader, James Ransone, etc., not to mention maybe 20 minutes into a movie when it's something designed to be around the story's halfway point. But that's just testament to how good their chemistry is; in fact I flat out loved their Chinese restaurant reunion, as it really did give me the same feeling I get from some sequel with a long gap when two old friends share the screen again (Han and Leia in Force Awakens would be a good example), even though it occurs, in Bev's case, the next scene after we first see her in the form of Jessica Chastain.
I bring this up because the movie as a whole has to constantly overcome its peculiar situation: staying faithful to a book that they consciously went out of their way to rework the last time. I almost wonder if leaving the kids out of it entirely (or perhaps confining them to bookending scenes) would have been better, as most of the scenes with them are repeats of what we saw the first time. At around the hour mark, Mike tasks them with finding a token to sacrifice to perform a ritual he believes will stop the monster, and tells them they all have to go out on their own to find their own unique object, which means that a big chunk of the middle of the film robs us of its best asset: the adult cast's chemistry. In its place, we get a series of repetitive sequences where Ben, Bill, Bev, etc go off to retrieve their object, have a flashback about some scary incident that occurred in 1989 (one they didn't show us last time, obviously), then encounter It again in the present before running back to the inn where they're all staying.
This isn't too far of a departure from the book, where Mike asks them to go around town to restore their memories, but the "fetch quest" element is what makes it not work here, not to mention treading water narratively. In the book it made sense - we hadn't gotten the full story of their first encounter with It yet, so it was still filling in gaps, and it made sense to have each character remember those things when off on their own. But we already know what happened last time - seeing this or that isolated, previously unmentioned incident doesn't really offer us anything necessary, and it's worse if you aren't easily scared by BOO! scenes because that's their actual function anyway. And by changing the purpose for this "let's split up" mission in the first place, the movie opens itself up to a rather silly plot hole, as one character goes off to their old school and goes through his motions, even though his token was in his pocket the whole time anyway (and this isn't even a reveal - he shows it to us before he's even arrived in Derry). I understand the motive on the creative team's part for this 30 minute chunk of the film (get the kids back! Add some scares!) but it really does the movie no favors.
Another "quirk" of the film is a bit too much comedy. I am ride or die for Bill Hader and I think he is great as Richie, but they overuse his ability to make a joke - I'm of the "less is more" school of thinking, and he undercuts more than one scare or emotional moment with a crack that wasn't really necessary. When Bev actually "Beep Beep"s him at one point (the only instance of it used in the original context, I think?) I silently thanked the woman and hoped it would stick. Don't get me wrong - I laughed my ass off at a number of his lines (there's one in the clubhouse that damn near killed me) but they lean on it a bit too much. And there are other things that had me shaking my head, including a bizarre four second-long needle-drop during a scare scene that comes off as an editing error more than an intentional decision, and a truly awful nod to The Shining - in a movie where things had to have been cut (Bev's big line in the trailer isn't in it, for starters) I had to wonder why this stuff got left in at all.
And not for nothing, but the first movie made 700 million dollars worldwide - why couldn't WB improve their FX budget for the sequel? Once again It takes several forms, and while some look fine, others look downright last-gen video game level "not good", undercutting the effectiveness of what might otherwise be a perfectly good setpiece. And if you ever want to prove to someone the value of practical FX over CGI, just show them the fortune cookie scenes from the miniseries and this film back to back - it was one of the 1990 film's most lauded scare moments, and it doesn't work at all here. Skarsgård's stuff, unsurprisingly, always works perfectly, though I swear he's in it a lot less this time, which doesn't help the overall feeling that the film doesn't generate as much nightmare fuel as its predecessor (which itself wasn't exactly the scariest movie ever made). The suspense is there, particularly in the finale since they've proven they're not going to do everything the same way it was originally written, and there are a couple of great moments like Pennywise bashing his head against a funhouse mirror, but perhaps because of the length of the film spreading these moments out more, I can't say I was ever truly tense or unnerved (at least, not after the brutal opening scene, which book readers will know but was left completely out of the miniseries: the horrible death of Adrian Mellon).
But the cast! Chastain is always wonderful, but I loved seeing this two-time Oscar nominee fully commit to the traditions of a horror movie, including getting covered in blood and diving/ducking her way around whatever CGI nonsense was going on around her. Ransone (as Eddie) was also a terrific choice (possibly the best "look alike" beyond Stan, who... well, you know), though like Hader they tend to let him go for laughs too often (as well as F-bombs - between the two of them I swear they rack up more than the Pulp Fiction characters), and again, Mustafa as Mike was a knockout; his scenes of trying to explain what's going on to his old friends who have forgotten everything (including him) are kind of devastating in a way. James McAvoy as Bill was less impressive, however; not only did he look the least like his younger counterpart, but he never quite made the role his own either (doesn't help that young Bill was a standout for the original), and he also has to keep sighing his way through the film's endless running gag about how his writer character can never come up with a good ending, a nod to a traditional criticism aimed at Mr. King himself. It's cute the first time, but by the 5th or 6th? Not so much.
That said, the repetition of this idea, that the endings he had aren't good and need to be changed (when we meet Bill he's on the set of an adaptation of one of his books, where the director is insisting on a new ending), had me thinking that they were just warning us that things wouldn't go down the same way. And indeed, there are some modifications to the finale, most of which I think are improvements. In fact even though I've lived through ______'s death in two other incarnations at this point, this time was the first time I cried about it, and I attribute it to the actors (one in particular) just flat out killing the loss they were feeling. Also, Audra doesn't follow Bill to Derry this time, so Bill doesn't have to save her, allowing the focus to remain on our Losers the entire time, which is the right choice (there's also a new plot point involving a letter that I quite liked) and helped make THIS ending a winner.
(Also, I have to assume it's intentional since other King adaptations are given little nods here and there - Bill's writing room at the end looks almost identical to Gordie's at the end of Stand By Me, which is a lovely tribute to a fellow "the ending made me cry" King tale.)
So ultimately it's... a lot like the first one! If I were to rattle off a list of strengths (the cast, the general vibe, the story) and weaknesses (the FX, the repetitive middle) in broad terms you wouldn't even know which one I was talking about, which I guess makes it a successful sequel that unfortunately has to combat higher expectations (and a longer running time; it's basically one sequence shy of being a full three hours*), hence the very mixed (even downright negative) reviews. Is it a perfect film? No it is not - and neither was the 2017 one, and folks were pretty kind to it and also it made a lot of money, so I'm not sure why folks seem so surprised that this one is, for better or worse, following its structure and overall tone pretty closely. An "ultimate" cut has been teased; maybe it would work better in that regard (or, as one friend suggested, recut entirely to match the book's structure), but for now I think it's a solid followup that was probably as good as it could be considering they had the unenviable task of tackling the trickier parts of a book they wanted to remain faithful to, while also working around the fact that they had to live with their decision to make the first one as if this one might have never existed. I think they got it more or less right.
What say you?
*Indeed, we aren't shown Mike's own quest to get his sacrificial object, presumably because he already had gotten it before everyone arrived. I've seen complaints that the movie wastes Mike and points to this as an example, which is absurd on all levels because a. these same people were complaining about the entire "get the object" subplot anyway, so I don't know why they'd want it to last LONGER, and - SPOILER! - Mike isn't attacked by Henry this time around and forced to sit the big battle out. Instead, he goes down to the sewers with the others, giving Mike "more to do" than ever before. So it's a very stupid complaint in my opinion.
I started watching SNL when I was 11, so obviously there were a lot of sketches that went over my head, but every now and then I'd enjoy one even though I wasn't even fully clued into the joke. One such sketch was when Christopher Walken was hosting and he played a psychic who could foresee inconsequential events in the future of anyone he touched ("You get a pistachio that's really hard to open!"), which I found hilarious and quoted all the time over the next few weeks. However, at the time I hadn't seen The Dead Zone, the 1983 film starring Walken, so I had no idea he was parodying one of his own characters.
I finally got around to seeing it sometime in college, and more or less immediately followed it with a read of the book, but hadn't seen it in its entirety since. So watching it on the big screen (part of a Stephen King themed programming block at the newly opened Alamo Drafthouse in LA*) was basically seeing it for the first time; all I really remembered was how it ended and that the film was kind of episodic, though even the details on those two things were hazy. Long story short, it was great to discover that the film is one of the best King adaptations.
It's also one of the best David Cronenberg movies, though it's worth noting it rarely feels like one of his. Apart from being shot in Canada, it's got zero of his trademarks; hell, it doesn't even have a score from Howard Shore, as the the studio insisted on Michael Kamen (who did a fine job, for what it's worth). I can't fault a guy for following his bliss, but I also can be sad that he didn't make more traditionally commercial/studio films - it's accessible, but there's a matter of fact-ness to the film's proceedings that I don't see other directors attempting, and it serves the subject matter well.
Indeed, calling it a "horror movie" is misleading; it only really qualifies because of the pedigree of its creative team. As I mentioned the film is episodic, and one such "episode" is a chunk in the middle where Johnny helps the local sheriff (Tom Skerritt) find a serial killer, which is the closest it gets to standard horror territory. But Cronenberg isn't interested in kill or chase scenes, and allows just about all of the violence it contains (not much) to occur off-screen to boot. The serial killings are never mentioned prior to Bannerman's first appearance, and neither he or the storyline are mentioned again once Johnny identifies the killer (who offs himself) - you could essentially cut the entire chunk of the movie out and it'd have no effect on the rest.
After that the plot switches to Greg Stillson, whose significance is threaded into the narrative much earlier so it doesn't come out of nowhere like the killer. Stillson's an ambitious candidate for the New Hampshire senate (not sure why it was changed from Maine) who has no intention of stopping there - he wants to be President, and when Johnny manages to shake his hand at a rally, we see how devastating that will be (the specifics are vague, but he is apparently launching nukes at some enemy). Man, it's a good thing we will never have a President that's a crazy jerk like him with access to our weapons arsenal!
OK, better writers than me have written about those unfortunate parallels already, so I'll stop at the one joke. Instead I want to talk about a small part that really gutted me out of nowhere: when Johnny makes a small joke to his father about his recent tryst with his ex lover, who is now married to someone else (and whose child with that man is in the room when he makes said joke). My dad died a year after I got out of college, and less than a year after moving out of the family home into my own apartment; I was closer to a kid than a fully grown adult, so I have been forever denied the opportunity to talk to my dad as another man like Johnny was here, making a "boys club" kind of joke as opposed to one I could ever see myself telling my own father.
Indeed, I'm now as old as Walken was when he made the movie, and seeing that brief scene really hammered home how much I've missed out on having my pops as a kind of buddy I could complain to about work or life, or ask for advice regarding things that were not even in my foreseeable future the last time I was able to talk to him (i.e. parental concerns). I know King's books have these scenes of humanity that give me "the feels", but they rarely make their way intact to the screen - and I certainly wouldn't expect one of those exceptions to be in a David Cronenberg movie, as warmth isn't really his thing.
The structure can make it somewhat frustrating for viewers who aren't prepared for it (it may be why I only saw it the one time all those years ago), but if you put less weight on the narrative and focus on Walken's tragic Johnny, the film works like gangbusters. As you might expect, Walken isn't the first guy I'd assume to be playing the role of a normal school teacher who has to save the world, but he's terrific here, downplaying a lot of his usual tics in favor of becoming, in a way, a romantic lead. His scenes with Brooke Adams are heartbreaking, and he really disappears in the role - it's only when he gets enraged at a man ignoring his warnings that you'll see the crazed Walken you know from Batman Returns and things like that.
The movie came out in 1983, same as Cujo (which also featured Bannerman, albeit played by a different actor) and Christine. They all made about the same amount of money (in fact they would be back to back to back on the 1983 chart if not for The Rescuers breaking them up), but Dead Zone made the least of those similar amounts, which is typical since it's naturally the most well regarded, even with its dated idea of a politician's career sinking after he did something despicable. I'm glad Alamo chose to include it with its select group of King programming (they only picked I think six of the 40+ options), as who knows when I'd find the time to finally revisit it otherwise?
Also, for the longest time Cosmopolis was the only Cronenberg movie I got to see theatrically, which is just a horrible way to live. But thanks to rep screenings I've been able to see many others, including most of my faves (The Fly, The Brood, Dead Ringers, this), some even on 35mm. So now Cosmopolis is simply the *worst* Cronenberg movie I've seen on the big screen, and I can sleep easier at night.
What say you?
*Where I'll be hosting my beloved Cathy's Curse two weeks from today - if you're around and want to go, act fast as we're almost sold out!
