Stephen King is an author who really needs no introduction. His books have topped best-seller lists for yonks but what is very interesting about them is that, unlike many authors, a lot of them have translated to the screen extremely successfully. Some bona fide great films have been based on his work such as Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone and The Running Man. Admittedly, there has been a few turkeys as well - Maximum Overdrive and The Lawnmower Man spring to mind; albeit, in the case of that latter movie, it bears absolutely no relation to King's actual short story! But basically, the hits outweigh the misses in the King adaptions, so this documentary feels very merited.
It takes a talking heads format, with contributions from many film people involved in screen adaptions, such as Frank Darabont and Mike Flanagan. There is a lot of clips too, to keep things interesting. It does seem to be a somewhat lop-sided film though, with disproportionately large segments given over to the likes of The Green Mile and The Shining TV adaption, with only small nods given to several of the more significant works. It isn't told in any particular order either, which does mean it does seem a bit scattershot in presentation. While this is definitely a good and entertaining watch, it does have to be said that it is very non-critical and doesn't focus on any creative failures - this approach does mean that it can seem a bit one-dimensional and a bit bland at times. Lastly, there was a thing which bugged me - and it's a thing you see in many such docs where you have film professionals and/or critics talking about the horror genre - and that was that, if you believed what they said, you would be believing that they all read King's books because of their social criticism and metaphors. My eyes were rolling in their sockets as so many of the participants descended into these bouts of pretension. I personally read his books for the vampires, ghosts and spaceships buried in forests. Where have I gone wrong?
