Definitely a Stephen King work. Kept getting THINNER vibes. Characters are exaggerated in line with the tone of his other 90s adaptations, little bit of CREEPSHOW tossed in. Fun, gory, maybe a little too heavy-handed with the final scene.
What really worked for me was Tatiana's bit about the nature of people dying, to the point that it felt out of place with the rest of the movie. If only they had more similar moments.
The recent wave of nostalgia-driven movies that mimics their predecessors beat for beat has been the creative drive of blockbusters for the last few years, and they’re mostly cheap and ineffective.
So why the heck does this work so well?! It could be the long gap between the two (36 years!). It could be that the nature of this story lends itself to references. It could be the climax totally eclipses the original, because the stakes feel real.
However you wanna spin it, it worked on me. A total crowd-pleaser!
The trials and tribulations of a young Jamaican/Puerto Rican mother living in the Bronx is one of the unsung gems of the 90s. More important, this is the first film produced by a major studio (Columbia) to be written and directed by a female African-American director (Darnell Martin).
The film almost uses the climax of Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) as a springboard for the events to follow (not directly, but the imagery is very similar).
While studio…
