Netflix's second Stephen King adaptation this year isn't as beautiful or brutal as Gerald's Game, but certainly matches its haunting quality.
1922, adapted from the novella in Full Dark, No Stars, follows Nebraska farmer Wilfred James (Thomas Jane, giving an awesome performance as what could easily be a flat caricature) as he navigates pride and hard work. Desperate to keep his land, threatened by his city-loving wife (Molly Parker) wanting to sell, "Wilf" gains the trust of his son Henry, and together they murder her. After slitting her throat, they dump her down the well; to excuse their filling it in, they also drop a cow down there, but not before Wilf sees rats feasting on his wife's corpse. It's all a bit icky, but it fits the backwoods-aesthetic well, not to mention Jane's morbidly fascinating deep-voiced drawl as he narrates the proceedings.
Henry, meanwhile, has impregnated a neighbor girl, whose angry parents (including Neal McDonough of Arrow infamy) send her away to be cared for. Henry, haunted by what he's done, leaves Wilf and helps his girlfriend escape before the two become robbers and she is fatally shot. With her death and the baby's, Henry kills himself. It's now the dead of winter, and Wilf's house is infested with rats. One bites his hand, which becomes infected and has to be amputated. Doors open and floorboards creak, and in full Fall of the House of Usher style, his dead wife returns to tell him the tale of his son, whispers he calls the knowledge of the dead. It's all nasty and still pretty icky, but mighty effective: A cascade of rats come down the stairs with her, and as they crawl around Wilf's helpless body, your skin will crawl too. (Oh, and fun fact for you King fans, the setting here is Hemingford Home, from The Stand!)
When Wilf finally sells the house, it is for mere scraps, as his neighbor wants nothing to do with Wilf or his (now dead) family. He moves to the city, drinks away what money he has, and tries to follow Henry's footsteps. Rats follow him, however, and eventually, haunted by the ghosts of his dead family, he writes the account of his tragic failures before the rats chew through the walls of his room and, presumably, kill him. This differs slightly from the novella, which I recall ending with the notion that Wilf's body was found with bite marks that may have been self-inflicted. That twist is not quite present here, though his sanity in the last scene is certainly questionable already. I liked the idea, though, that these rats ate his confession as well, something left unresolved here.
As it is, 1922 is a properly chilling haunted (farm)house flick, one that brings into sharp focus issues of financial strain, urbanized crime and isolation, and family dissolution. It's a tragedy of the highest order, a sort of Macbeth-in-the-cornfield in which one man's pride is his downfall. The film thus becomes a slow-burner of the most maddening variety, one that never terrifies you but gnaws at your skin like so many rats, causing you to suffer while you watch Wilf's punishments continue.
IMDb: 1922
No comments:
Post a Comment