Junk of the highest order

hawksburn

Stephen King screen adaptations have a well known history of being hit-or-miss (mostly miss). However I was prepared to give this a try, especially since I've regarded his made-for-tv stuff quite highly since "The Stand" (which I regard as one of the best mini-series ever).

However this sad affair I'm sorry to say, is junk. Lord knows I persevered. I persevered thru the uneventful exposition (taking a whole episode to do what a motion-picture would do in 20 minutes, thereby betraying it's tv origins - I watched this on dvd, it not having been screened by any of the networks in Australia). I persevered thru the lame attempts at frightening the audience (unless they're aiming this at 10 year olds on a sleepover, give up) via incredibly bad cgi & puppetry. I persevered thru the illogicalities that infected the script.

The biggest problem was that none of these characters had my sympathy. I didn't care about any of them. The only real half interesting character was Julian Sands but then they kill him off. By the final part I was sincerely wishing that the "ghosts" would finish the lot of them off (ESPECIALLY the little girl!!!). I understand the conventions of the ghost-horror genre. Put a bunch of stupid people in a spooky setting (i.e house, closed summer camp etc etc...) then watch them consistently make bad decisions until only 1 or 2 of them are left. But these people are beyond stupid.


"I'm just going into the haunted kitchen by myself to get some milk from the refridgerator that I noticed where we saw the headless woman this afternoon even though we have no power, it's the middle of the night, and the house is dark"

"Well remember that the house is prone to change shape and you may never find your way back and god knows 5 people are already dead or missing, so take a torch."

"Ok"

These people are dumb to the 'nth' extreme. Hard to give a crap about them really.

Nancy Travis' attempts at acting insane would make Jack Nicholson spin in his grave.

While this certainly isn't the worst ghost movie I've ever seen ('The Haunted' would probably win that award), the fact is it takes too long to get anywhere, and then when it finally does, the emotional payoff to reward ones perseverence fails miserably. It's neither scary, spooky, darkly funny or entertaining. It's boring.

score 2/10

hawksburn 17 November 2002

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0757305/