The Running Man (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Richard Bachman is having a hell of a year. Stephen King's pseudonym, mostly used in his earlier years as a publishing strategy to avoid saturating the market -- hilarious, in retrospect of the prolific author's career -- published a handful of edgy horror-thrillers in the '80s. Bachman's first four titles have been collected into a single work, The Bachman Books, including Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man. The linked title was adapted as a wonderful film earlier in 2025, and now we get the second cinematic adaptation of The Running Man, after the 1987 film. I've admittedly not read the source material nor seen the previous film of this title, so my thoughts here are only of Edgar Wright's new film.

Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, Last Night in Soho), known for fast pacing, action, and metafictional and/or satirical genre films -- in addition to his easily recognizable musical and editing styles -- is a pretty solid fit for this material, in terms of big-budget filmmaking. And, oddly enough, this title fits well with The Long Walk in thematic conceit: in each, a dystopian governmental regime rules the United States, offering the possibility of success and wealth to individuals who compete in a dangerous, violent activity meant to be broadcast to an oppressed nation. The Running Man is the name of a televised show, not unlike The Hunger Games, in which the authoritarian Network attempts to placate suffering viewers with how much worse life could be. Offering its entrants $1 billion if they survive one month, the Network sends its private assassins out to kill the competitors; by televising the chase, the Network also encourages casual citizens to attempt murder.

Its bizarre mashup of competition and reality television notwithstanding, it would seem the show is a certain lose-lose situation. But Ben Richards (Glen Powell), a blue collar worker living in abject poverty with his wife (Jayme Lawson, of The Batman and Sinners) and infant daughter, needs money. Their daughter is sick, and even with Sheila working, they can't afford her necessary medicine. Ben auditions for the Network, hoping to earn money on one of its other shows, only to find himself forced into competition for the most brutal of all. He's promised his family will be moved to a safe house and given an advance on winnings to help his daughter. What else can he do?

There might be a time and place to pick apart the internal logic of this story, but this isn't it. Mostly because Wright won't let us think too critically about anything. Relentlessly paced, the film feels like a race even as we're watching it, jolting us from chase to fight sequences with only action in-between. What differentiates this from, say, a John Wick film is Wright's signature style: brightly lit scenes, charming wit from our lead actor, and a certain musical flair that keeps things bouncy and moving. That's not to say this isn't bleak, so don't get your hopes up. It's about as nasty and gritty as you could imagine in visual presentation, to say nothing of its disturbingly timely messaging about the cruelty of modern American life under oligarchic systems. And it doesn't help that, in the world of the story, no one has ever won "The Running Man."

Powell himself delivers an admirable performance, injecting a viciousness to his character that I can't recall seeing in him before. Ben isn't just angry, he's determined to live out a life that says little more than "fuck you" to the regime he toils under. And we're meant to fully agree with him. It's not for nothing that we don't know exactly what line of work his wife does, though it's strongly hinted that she's a sex worker and neither of them really want her to be. I can easily imagine this as a highly successful early 2000s film, with its grimy punk style, but I'm glad this film pushes things into a recognizable future. It's telling, I might add, that the public face of the Network (the role played deliciously by Stanley Tucci in the Hunger Games series) is Colman Domingo acting his chops off as a diabolically insane game show host in glorious costume. 

There is a lot to unpack in this film. Josh Brolin plays an executive producer of the Network, who eyeballs Ben and railroads him into the game; the Network's use of manipulative deepfakes to control televised output is as upsetting (and, curiously, unremarkable in the film itself) as the means by which producers get their desired outcome. On his run from potential killers, Ben meets William H. Macy, Daniel Ezra, and Michael Cera, who help him in various ways and pay the price for their aid. We don't get to know these characters, and while it might be disheartening to see such prominent character actors chewing on so little, the film isn't about building community in the face of authoritarian regimes; it's more or less a direct critique of the ways neoliberal methods are employed by empire to entertain and provide false hope to the populace. So it's really just about the main guy trying to overcome the odds stacked against him.

And what odds. I mean, Lee Pace plays his primary hunter, wearing a mask and a lot of leather, and his abilities with physical performance are excellently featured here.

As Powell's vehicle, I can't speak highly enough of this film's efforts to showcase him. His physique is highlighted as much as his caustic wit; he's not totally likable, but he fully owns our attention and sympathies. Despite occasionally making foolish decisions, he's understandable and we desperately want him to succeed. Perhaps this is because we, too, in 2025 (okay, 2026 now; I'm trying to catch up, so sue me) are constantly concerned about making a living wage that allows us healthcare and housing, accountability in government, transparency and ethics in business. My lasting impression of the film is one of annoyance -- how can all these characters, who are universally aware of the falseness of what they're being fed on the tube, keep going along with the bullshit? -- but it's an annoyance I'm increasingly feeling towards our reality.

Annoyance, though, isn't always a bad thing when it's intentional. And this film succeeds in its intent. Like an adrenaline shot of moral outrage, this is a profoundly angry film that is thoroughly entertaining while stoking the same ire we should all be feeling.

The Long Walk (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

It's become somehow fun for people to either adore or detest Stephen King -- especially his adaptations -- and I don't have the slightest interest in those conversations. King is a master of horror fiction, that much has always been clear, and I'm rarely more intrigued than when a new title surfaces. While I've been a longtime personal fan of his work, I'm by no means an expert or even a completionist. Yet. So this novel, published in 1979 under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, was not one I had read before, and I was eager to experience it. Little did I know that it would blow me away.

If you've seen the trailer, or seen the title itself, you already know the plot. A simple concept becomes much more, though, in King's imagination, as he imbues diverse characters with such fascinating psychological quirks that they end up being the story far more than the plot is. His imagined America, here, is bleak and evil, and the characters are cogs in a dystopian machine, lorded over by a totalitarian military regime that feels shockingly close to where we're currently headed. Think something between The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale, and that's the kind of haunting mess you'll have stuck in your head after watching this film.

Which is apt, as it's helmed by Francis Lawrence himself, director of most of the Hunger Games film series (and Constantine, I Am Legend, Water for Elephants, and Red Sparrow). He melds quite well, here, with King's story of adolescent male bonding -- rather typical of his work -- in a somewhat retro version of Americana, set in remote rural Maine. I can only imagine the difficulty with which writer JT Mollner had to grapple in dramatizing this story for the screen, visually monotonous as it is and with a literally set pace of 3mph. Yet Mollner's sheer brilliance in Strange Darling should have prepared me for the psychological thrills he'd deliver here, on the edges of civilization and civility alike. There's a literary sensibility to this film I have trouble identifying, but it has something to do with Steinbeck and Bradbury. And the characters' dialogue is never less than riveting, as it's pretty much all we -- and they -- have to go on. What else can you do while walking endlessly by necessity?

I don't really have much else to say, so forgive the coming non-sequiturs. The actors are all excellent, especially leads Cooper Hoffman (yes, Hoffman) and David Jonsson (making a huge case for leading man stardom, after Alien: Romulus), the latter of which was so charming and charismatic in this film I sometimes had trouble believing he was suffering at all. Talk about literature; Jonsson is the film's Samwise Gamgee. Judy Greer, Charlie Plummer, and Mark Hamill are all grim and suitably entertaining, though none are really given any character depth to feel like high points in the film. The scenes of horror -- and I do mean pure, unadulterated, violent and gross and shocking horror -- truly upset me in this film, perhaps because I didn't expect it of Lawrence. This is a hard R rating, for sure, and even someone too accustomed to such things may find parts of this film difficult to endure. I sure did.

This is going on my list of favorite King adaptations, for sure. It's a somber affair, one rife with elevated ideas and major themes woven with care and compassion for its characters. Depicting a hard world like this can so easily result in flattened character archetypes and forced action; this feels raw and immediate in a way that's difficult to put into words. This is along the lines of The Green Mile or The Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Claiborne, even Stand By Me, in terms of King's work, and I just loved it, despite sweating profusely and weeping loudly during our screening. The film's climax was a tad disappointing to me, but no less satisfying for it, and by the time the credits started, I was a mess. Thankfully, that meant I stayed in the darkened auditorium and heard the original song "Took a Walk" by Shaboozey and Stephen Wilson Jr., which is already my choice for best original song of 2025. What an extraordinary final touch to an already highly successful film.

The Monkey (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Mike Flanagan is in the news again for making more Stephen King film adaptations but it's Oz Perkins who helmed The Monkey. Based on King's 1980 short story of the same name, the plot concerns a cursed toy monkey that causes somewhat random brutal deaths. That's it. Simple, straightforward, easy. No demonic entity or possessive spirit of a serial killer, no flawed AI taking over, no expansive mythmaking or origin lore. Just death, meted out by the kind of nightmarish plaything that is sure to make you ask, "Who would actually play with this, and how?"

Perkins, who came into the spotlight last year for Longlegs, is much more impressive a filmmaker when social media conversation isn't hyperbolically lauding his as "the scariest movie of the year" and such drivel. I'll maintain that The Blackcoat's Daughter is much more terrifying than anything Nic Cage eked out from his mime makeup, fun as that was to see. His Gretel & Hansel and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House are masterclasses in Gothic atmosphere and detached storytelling. But the serial killer weirdness in Longlegs implied a turn in Perkins's aesthetic, and The Monkey certainly leans into a gonzo style we haven't seen from him yet. In his case, bigger spectacle isn't camp, which has been growing in popularity (though often misunderstood and mislabeled); it's just horror, a frank look at the absolute mess death often brings with it.

That's not to say it's a morose affair. This macabre experiment in tone indeed features several moments designed to elicit aloud cries of joy and surprise. Think Final Destination, but without the obsession those characters have with outsmarting or escaping death; those feature a certain hope and agency that Perkins's film pointedly does not share. The Monkey will "getcha," and it's going to be gross and strange, and there really isn't rhyme or reason to it. Its opening sequence demonstrates this, as a messy (read: bloody) Adam Scott (Krampus, Little Evil) barges into a pawn shop to sell the ape doll and its little drum, looking as grim and horrified as... well, as someone who usually does comedy would in bloody clothes at night while lugging around a cursed toy that could cause his death at any moment. Perkins has been a confident filmmaker from his start, but a film this popularly oriented could have slipped from his grip; not so, and it's in scenes like this that he reminds us of his absolute control over complex and heightened tone.

Time jumps ahead, and the story proper concerns twin brothers, Hal and Bill, who discover dad's toy monkey (despite our having seen him destroy it) and activate it. It was in a closet with his remaining stuff, dear old daddy having absconded mysteriously after that prologue scene. First it's their babysitter who bites it -- almost literally -- and then the boys realize every time they twist the monkey's wind-up key, someone near them dies. By the time it takes their weary mother (Tatiana Maslany) from them, the boys drop it down a well and soon become estranged. We jump again twenty-five years into the future, and, as any King fan will tell you, the twins' hidden past returns with a vengeance.

The barrage of death scenes in this film are graphic, to be sure, but they aren't really meant to be taken seriously. It's Grand Guignol for the postmodern crowd. A woman jumps into an electrified pool and explodes. Yet, despite laughter in the screening auditorium I attended, the comedy is notably uncomfortable, as if Perkins is inviting us to laugh and then asking why we did so. There's a tense undercurrent of inevitability as the film implicates the audience in its massacre. We often say that God has a sense of humor when good things happen in roundabout or odd ways; what if Death has a sense of humor, too?

You might wonder why I bring God into a discussion of this amoral, bleak, grotesque exercise in violence and irreverent humor. But the film's ending, which I won't spoil here, suggests that Perkins himself has some biblical ideas in mind regarding the nature of the monkey and its task among humanity, and its inclusion of a specific apocalyptic character is presented in earnest, not in satire. Perhaps he's saying that if Death can laugh at us, we should laugh back at it; a worthy message itself, this gains power when you consider Perkins's personal story as well as King's. We know about his father -- a relationship that still arouses curiosity among fans, especially as daddy issues keep cropping up in Perkins's films -- but a little-known factoid is that Perkins's mother died on the plane that struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. As Longlegs was clearly more about Anthony Perkins and The Monkey has more heart for Berry Berenson, I'd be curious to see them billed in a double feature together and would love to hear Perkins give a talkback. That would be a therapy session for the ages!

Perkins, as writer and director, added a lot to King's story, making it his own in the process. Yet it's a lean, mean hour and a half of adrenaline and violence with nary an ounce of unnecessary weight. No matter how interested I might be in the auteur's influence, the point remains that this is a straightforward and accessible film about random death and a cosmic indifference or even cruelty toward human life. Our age of "elevated horror" and films that require dissertations (or shitty YouTube videos) to explain their nuanced intricacies needs films like The Monkey to jump in, shake things up, and leave us wanting more. I hope we don't get it.

Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

Adapted from the recent Stephen King novella of the same name, Mr. Harrigan's Phone debuted on Netflix last week. Unfairly (and somewhat inaccurately) labeled as "horror" and put in the same lineups as other spooky October-y fare, the film is almost certain to garner negative reactions from the casual viewer. Streaming categories like that are too broad; sure, the film is technically a horror film, but there's nothing really scary in it. Someone looking for a random scary movie to cuddle up watching will likely be very disappointed with this one, marketed as it is with King's name and reputation. And yet this is very much a King story, albeit a coming-of-age one like Stand By Me. His dramas, though arguably less famous, are pretty incredible themselves; his more recent ones (this story included) tend to take on specific hot topics or social issues head-on. This one, as you might guess, targets our relationship to smart phones even as it fleshes out a remarkably touching intergenerational friendship.

Schoolboy Craig (Jaeden Martell), after reading from the pulpit at church, gets hired by the wealthiest man in the state of Maine. Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), elderly and lonely, lives an anachronistic life in his local mansion, eschewing technology and preferring to read the newspaper or sit in his conservatory among the plants. As his eyes are failing -- or so he says -- Craig is meant to read to him. Not the tawdry and depressing mess of news blurbs, but rather the literature that Mr. Harrigan keeps in his library. After each reading session, they discuss themes and interpretations of classics like Heart of Darkness and The Brothers Karamazov, building an extraordinary friendship together. Mr. Harrigan's occasionally gruff demeanor belies a sensitive soul striving for sentimental connection. We wonder about his family, if he ever really had loved ones; his business acumen seems to have been his sole passion, one he now resents to some extent.

John Lee Hancock, director of The Rookie, The Founder, and The Blind Side (but, far more importantly, The Little Things, Saving Mr. Banks, and The Alamo), helms this adaptation with a brooding sense of calmness. We can see the ways Mr. Harrigan encourages Craig to stand up for himself with a level of confidence neither of them really feels; at least the elderly man surely did at one point, as he no doubt confidently stepped on others up the capitalist corporate ladders of his career. Craig, while clearly filling a void of companionship, seems to struggle with how to help his friend reciprocally, and so gets him a smart phone on which he can track the stock market and make real-time financial decisions. Mr. Harrigan gets hooked, much to both of their wonder and disappointment. He even mentions, while clasping and swiping his screen, how much he hates being tethered to the device. How many of us feel the same loving loathing toward these little torturous miracles?

I haven't read the story on which this film is based, admittedly, but I found myself wondering how much of the screenplay was King and how much was Hancock (who also adapted it himself). Most of the film is heavy-handed posturing about the dangers of being constantly connected, and it ultimately feels like a lecture on freeing ourselves from slavery to tech. That's not un-King-like, especially in some of his recent work that occasionally bends far from pure horror. But by the point in the film that supernatural elements enter -- and correspondingly darker themes -- it feels forced, rushed, and like woefully squandered opportunities. Because Mr. Harrigan, old as he is, indeed dies of natural causes. After Craig slips the man's cell phone into his casket at the funeral, he begins receiving calls from the dead man's phone. Despairing and missing his friendship, Craig shares stories like a verbal diary, describing his bullies and struggles with school and family. And soon enough, bad things happen to those who have slighted the young man.

Had the film leaned into these elements more intently and spectacularly, it would easily have made for a chilling horror flick. There could have been fascinating artistic representations of the balance (or imbalance) of power when it comes to our age, access to technology, and even virtual power (in instances of cyberbullying, for example). It could have shown how too much information -- rather, misinformation and fake news, as Mr. Harrigan notes his fear of the cell phone "gizmo" -- can in fact lead to radicalization and violence. It could have embraced Craig's coming of age through his learning of how to mete out justice with sudden and profound power. By the end, the film vaguely hints that had Mr. Harrigan had this power earlier in his life, great horrors would have happened, and that Craig has maneuvered through his moralistic mess to choose better. But I'm still not sure that Hancock ever really gets there in any concrete way, and so the film seems content to dwell in the possibilities: haunting in its own way, but not enough to provide any chills or even chilling insights.

In the Tall Grass (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

"Don't go into the long grass!" shouts Ajay as the group of mercenaries forge their way through the tropical plain of Isla Sorna, as we see the snake-like tails of velociraptors closing in. Oh wait, I'm sorry, that's the wrong movie. But I definitely quoted it aloud more than once while watching the latest Stephen King adaptation made for Netflix streaming, In the Tall Grass, based on King's novella of the same name.

In what can only be an idea that King wrote in the furious frenzy of a single sitting (with his son Joe), the story goes something like this: Two siblings stop their car on a long stretch of open field near an old church, hearing a boy calling for help. Becky is six months pregnant, and her brother Cal is perhaps a little too protective and attentive. The field appears to be made of tall grass, tall as sunflowers or full-grown corn, and the boy, Tobin, is nowhere in sight. Once they hear Tobin's mother, Natalie, calling out telling her son not to seek help, the siblings enter the grass, quickly becoming separated from each other and hopelessly lost. The four people seem able to hear each other, but their voices will be nearby and terribly distant in only a few seconds' time, even when nobody is moving.

The strangeness of the grass becomes terribly claustrophobic as day progresses toward night. It's hot until it's not, and the thick black mud underfoot makes moving quickly difficult. In one breathtakingly brilliant scene, Cal and Becky seem close enough to each other that they decide to jump in the air to locate each other: one jump reveals about ten or fifteen feet of separation, but the next -- almost immediately afterward -- sets them hundreds of feet apart. But this is no Goblet of Fire hedge maze; it's a sea of grass whose rip currents are swift and utterly undetectable.

Undetectable, that is, until Tobin's father Ross (Patrick Wilson) appears, suddenly, to Becky. He's charming and earnest and a little too creepy to follow, but he claims to know the way and poor Becky needs all the help she can get. Cal meets Tobin, who says over a dead bird that the grass doesn't move dead things. This is where the already weird but delightfully spooky movie takes a slight turn south, prioritizing half-baked pseudo-mythology over fleshing out the considerable present horror. It's fairly obvious, I think, even to those unfamiliar with the novella that this halfway point is where King's source material stops and the film's inventions begin.

I don't want to spoil it too much, but the film works best at its simplest. Director and writer Vincenzo Natali exercises some truly beautiful control over this story with his cinematographer Craig Wroblenski (television shows Fargo, Legion, and Zoo). The visual dynamic is such that I almost -- almost, mind -- wish there were no dialogue at all; the Hitchcockian prioritizing of visual storytelling here sometimes made me forget the characters were usually saying inane or annoying things. I made the mistake of first watching this movie on my phone while exercising, but I rectified it by watching on a larger screen a few days later. Natali directed some episodes of Hannibal and independent and obscure sci-fi/horror flicks that are really lovely, and his directorial abilities are perhaps at their best yet here. This movie demands to be seen on a larger scale. Too bad it won't prove quite narratively smart enough to garner more fans.

I think where the film falters is in the second half, when Natali clearly wanted to do more with the source material. He introduces issues of time loops and thematic concerns of fate and a cultish obsession with a large rock in the field that altogether start to make this movie feel as if it's meant to connect somehow with Children of the Corn. It gets a bit weird and hard to conceptualize, and I think that's because it becomes less relatable. We all understand the horror of being lost in an endless, sentient field, but when it becomes, literally, a sort of hellish chaos or malevolent limbo, we can't possibly feel as intimately connected. Natali might have served a more effective horror piece had he focused on the characters, their isolation, their fear responses, and the ways in which they succeed or fail to escape.

Pet Sematary (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

There's an interesting duality in approaches to the newest wave of Stephen King adaptations. There's the slow-burn, densely atmospheric and psychological horror of Castle Rock and Gerald's Game, and then there's the kinetic, frenzied, and fabulously scary horror of IT and the latest version of Pet Sematary. Both work well in their own ways, and pay homage to different aspects of King's aesthetic.

Here, much of the story is the same as the original 1989 film with a few minor twists. I must confess to not yet having read the novel; from what I know of it, though, and much like King's work in general, it can be read in many ways from pure horror to sociohistorical dark satire to deep psychoanalytic exploration. This film -- much like the recent adaptation of a certain evil clown's story -- doesn't really present us with a specific "purpose" wherein it might inhabit one of these approaches. Rather it simply presents a solid scary horror movie, one that disturbs as it surprises.

After moving from Boston to the northernmost fringes of rural Maine, Dr. Louis Creed and his wife Rachel settle into their new homestead with their two children Ellie and Gage. Even their cat Church seems to enjoy the new digs; until, that is, he is crunched by a vehicle on the road, down which semi-trucks tend to drive recklessly. Without telling his impressionable daughter, Louis goes off to bury the beast in a rustic pet cemetary down in the woods nearby. His neighbor and new friend Jud joins him, and suddenly leads Louis much farther into the woods, through a swamp and to a rocky outcropping, where he instructs Louis to bury Church.

As you might imagine, we quickly learn that this is an old Native American burial ground, and things interred here tend to come back from the dead. First, Church returns, though his temperament is notably more hostile than before. Then, when tragedy strikes again on that same road, Louis buries his beloved daughter (not his toddler son, as in the previous film) in the hopes that she'll come back fresher (weird, but accurate) and more like herself. His hopes blind him to her deterioration, and as her sadistic bloodthirst intensifies, Louis must decide the cost he's willing to pay for family.

It's all rich material, and this film rolls with all its punches, delivering highly effective, quick-paced thrills designed to make you jump. In an era of high-class horror that often completely denies its audience of this reaction, it's fun to have a well-crafted roller coaster ride of genuine scares. Moments are twisted into more gruesome scenarios: the undead Ellie cuddled up with her father in bed, Rachel's memories of her deceased sister coming back to haunt her, and of course the nature of evil in the woods.

To this last point, I found it fascinating that this film suggests a greater mythology than the original picture. In that, the Micmac tribe abandoned their burial grounds when the earth turned bad (whatever that means). In this, though, an unnamed tribe abandoned their hallowed land when a Wendigo appeared. Of course this seems to make a bit more sense given the geographical location and themes of shapeshifting and cannibalism. But whereas the first film featured Gage cannibalizing his victims, Ellie does no such thing here; instead, she takes the guise of Jud's deceased wife at one point.

Logic seems misplaced here. Why incorporate (or introduce, if it's not in the novel) the Wendigo as a terrifying icon of evil and then not fulfill it? It could have appeared during the climax, a la the demon monster thing at the end of the Evil Dead remake. It could have even appeared in passing in the swamp or in the shadows of the woods, more so than a possible brief phantasm in the fog. Instead, the film could have taken a leaf from the original and simply omitted this, exploring in depth the psychological torments of the cost of life and what we weigh in its balance.

Really, though, I only really got upset during the final ten minutes or so, when the film completely derails. Ellie kills Rachel, knocks out Louis, then drags Rachel to the cemetary to bury her. Almost instantly (much sooner than the film's prior logic had dictated) Rachel returns and kills Louis. It seems they then bury Louis before -- again, almost instantly -- the trio return for poor toddler Gage. Since when do the undead in Pet Sematary seek to increase their number? And why would Ellie not kill Louis and Rachel at the same time when she has a much better opportunity? Then add the wishy-washy cover of the title song, and it's all a big letdown from what otherwise was a solid scary movie.

1922 (2017)

Score: 4 / 5

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

Gerald's Game (2017)

Score: 5 / 5

I may have misspoken. IT was a fabulously fun and terrifying flick, but it's not the best Stephen King adaptation this year. That label belongs firmly on Gerald's Game, available on Netflix. Mike Flanagan's newest film is yet another jewel in his severely underrated crown. It joins his masterpieces Oculus and Hush as some of the most emotionally intelligent, psychologically thrilling horror movies ever made.

If you still haven't read King's novel or seen the film, proceed with caution. Spoilers abound. Part of the thrill of this game was, for me, having no idea what might happen next.

To save their sexless -- even touchless -- marriage, Jessie and Gerald escape to an isolated lake house in Alabama. A successful lawyer, Gerald harbors expensive tastes and an assertive personality, while Jessie seems mostly along for the ride. She stops her husband from hitting a stray dog in the road, then cooks insanely expensive meat to feed the beast. When Gerald pops some Viagra and pulls out some handcuffs for a sex game, she seems a little unnerved but willing to entertain his desires. Unfortunately for her, he quickly becomes aggressive, even beginning to enact a rape fantasy, and she tries to stop him. Either due to her kicking him off, the emotional stress of the situation, or the extra pills in his bloodstream, Gerald has a heart attack, falls off the bed, hits his head, and dies.

This is only the first twenty minutes or so.

What follows for over an hour is intense psychodrama into Jessie's mind. Her attempts to free herself are unfruitful, and as dehydration sets in, she begins to hallucinate. Gerald taunts her and they discuss their failed marriage; a vision of herself appears and reminds her of a glass of water on the shelf above. The visions seem as real as the dog, who enters the room and begins to feed on Gerald's bloody corpse, and a haunting specter who appears at night with a box of bones and trinkets. She refers to the deformed man as "made of moonlight," and Gerald suggests that he is Death incarnate. Jessie begins remembering the past; as a girl, her family vacationed at a lake house where she was sexually abused by her manipulative father. For the rest of the film, flashbacks and hallucinations and reality meld into a nightmarish descent into her mind.

Carla Gugino gives what might be a career-best performance in a very difficult role, riveting our eyes to the screen and allowing each new horror to take her for a ride. Close-ups on her face provide her with ample opportunities to mine each moment for all their dramatic worth, and her multi-layered efforts are never taken for granted by the camera. Bruce Greenwood is almost as absorbing as a man navigating the waters of power and influence in a marriage. His is a thankless part, but one that allows for range and depth; at times he is vindictive and dangerous, at others sweet and eager to help.

Mike Flanagan's direction here makes what could easily be a boring or stuffy story a sort of Icy-Hot exercise. Alternating between heated, close-up action shots and distant, chilly horror shots, the film proceeds with calculated, deliberate pace, forcing us to invest our attention and feelings. He makes the film a sort of chamber piece, and more than once I wondered if he was making a case that this could (and should) be done on stage. Almost the whole film takes place in the bedroom of the lake house, and even those that don't seem informed by the bedroom set. Memories of a solar eclipse might well have taken place just beyond the outer wall; memories of dinner, cut hands, and daddy issues bleed into the waking reality of Jessie's situation. Especially in the second half, impressionistic lighting challenge our understanding of atmosphere and perception, as the vibrant red of fading sunlight warp shadows and inform the film's editing (well done, editor!).

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the specter of Death was actually real, a grave robber/necrophile/serial killer/cannibal who spared Jessie because he prefers male victims. The finale -- through no fault of the film, mind, but the source material -- is a bit weird, I'll admit, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's horrific, to be sure, but there's a certain level of gimmicky coincidence that bothers me. Thankfully, it is tempered by Jessie's character arc, which triumphs over diseased, fatalistic modern masculinity and allows her to walk, at last, out from the bloody eclipse and into clear yellow sunlight.

IMDb: Gerald's Game

It (2017)

Score: 5 / 5

The greatest joy of IT is that it's an absolute joy to watch. Stephen King screen adaptations tend to get a bad rap, by and large, because of how many there are and how bad many of them are. Poor production values and streamlined scripts have so often butchered the master of horror's work, though there are a few gems out there. I feared for this one. The sheer size and scope of the novel is daunting at best, and there has already been a fabulous adaptation in the 1990 miniseries starring Tim Curry in a now-iconic role. While that vision suffers, too, from some cheap effects and dated -isms, it has certainly stood the test of time as a classic iteration of horror-comedy. Sure, Tim Curry will freak you out a bit, but he's on screen so much and having such a blast, it's hard not to grin and bear the more horrific parts of the story -- namely, the wicked townspeople who harm and neglect their children.

Andy Muschietti's new film is everything we could have wanted and then some.

The year is 1988 (a logical update from the novel, which begins in '57; the film, catering to millennials and Gen Xers, seeks to evoke childhood nostalgia). The town is Derry, Maine, and children are going missing. The film follows a small group of concerned youngsters who call themselves the Losers Club as they unravel the mystery and confront the evil that plagues their town. We follow the seven Losers through the trials of their personal lives (abusive or absent parents, school bullies) as they come of age together. Indeed, the heart of the film lies with these breakout stars. Each kid owns the camera's attention like veteran actors, and each is so comfortable with the crude humor and abject terror that we believe each of them almost instantly. They navigate the hilarious waters of pre-adolescence with impeccable timing and laugh-out-loud delivery, which serve to make the horrors to come even more shocking. The writers and performers do some truly incredible work in those moments of friendship and camaraderie shared by the Losers. Their lighthearted banter and hypertalkative silliness are immediately endearing because it's so accurate. In fact, even without the titular villain, this movie would have been a good watch just for these kids. With such a large cast, it's hard to make the audience care for each kid equally and invest in their plights; this film perfectly highlights each one individually, and then as a group, so you never have to question, "Wait, which kid is that?" "What's his name?" "What's he going through?"

But this isn't just a sweet throwback to our youth, though the vibes of feel-good '80s dramedies are palpably present. There is true horror lurking under Derry, and Muschietti pulls no punches. In fact, apart from the excellent coming-of-age narratives, the greatest achievement of this film is in its horror. That may not mean much at first glance -- this is a horror film, of course it's good at that -- but look again. Horror is hard to film. Jump-scares are a dime a dozen, and though effective, don't usually sit with you long afterward. Movies that seek to genuinely disturb are often lost in psychosexual drama or gore-porn that confuses or irritates us. As I've said before, there are small but crucial differences between scary movies and horror films, and IT has the brilliant good sense to embody both.

Bill Skarsgard plays a damned terrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown, to be sure. His rolling eyes, lilting inflection, and salivating lips are immediately chilling, but he has enough control to avoid any comparison to Tim Curry's aggressively psychotic iteration of the character. More importantly, the filmmakers here know that the best way to scare us is not to have Pennywise in full view or even physically present most of the time; rather, they keep him in shadows if he's present at all. Usually it's just a balloon or a subtle peek-around-the-corner that serves as knowledge of his presence, and it will drive you back in your seat. Effective, too, are his incarnations of the children's fears. Pennywise, you see, is a shapeshifter that takes on the form of children's fears to season their meat, so to speak. Gone are the embodiments of '50s pop horror, such as the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Wolf-Man. (That is, they are not present explicitly, though there are more than a few nods to the fanbase; during the climactic fight, Pennywise -- thanks to some eye-popping visual effects -- transforms from monster to monster faster than a boggart, and we do in fact see the werewolf's claw enlarging momentarily, and the icky moment of a mummy's bandages binding Ben's face to Pennywise's.)

Instead the filmmakers have delved deeper into the psychological trauma of the Losers and developed what really makes them squirm. Ben, having been researching the 27-year tragedies of Derry and stumbling upon the photo of a child's head in a tree following an Easter explosion, follows smoldering eggs to the library basement and is attacked by a child's headless specter. Mike, haunted by the memory of his parents burning to death in the Black Spot, sees burning hands reaching for him from behind a locked door. On the other hand, some of the children's fears are directly transferred from the novel. Beverly's onset of puberty and the incestuous abuse of her father set the stage for her bathroom horror show, the excessiveness of which recalls Carrie and the blood rain during the climax of the Evil Dead remake.

Apart from discussion of adaptations and details, though, I want to impress that my favorite element of this film is with its spirit. This is one of those adaptations that -- though remarkably faithful to source details -- captures the essence of King's novel so absolutely I find it astonishing he wasn't a producer or co-writer. IT has the distinction of being a horror film that feels like a waking nightmare. Partly because of its familiar design, and partly due to expert delivery, it starts as a dreamlike flashback and quickly darkens (after all, what good's horror if it doesn't come out of joy?). Sweeping camera motions and unnerving angles push us to view what we don't want to see by entrancing us, much as Pennywise entrances his prey. Muschietti even takes on Pennywise's inherent theatricality, distorting images and sounds as if they were in carnival funhouses, and regurgitating them on screen with gleeful malice. Even only two-thirds of the way through the movie (for fans, the encounter in the house on Neibolt Street) feels like a climax, simply due to its in-your-face violent terror. It was in that sequence I realized what Muschietti was doing: Scaring the shit out of us kids, gathered around a lit campfire, as he tells a story with every trick he's got. Heightened volume, incoherent children's screams, whirlwind cinematography and bewildering editing, and some spectacular special effects make this film a nightmarish descent into the hell of your imagination.

Don't cover your eyes. It might be worse than what you see on screen. That's how deep IT gets under your skin.

IMDb: It