STORM OF THE CENTURY
At last, King doesn't just blow up the town at the end
I missed the first twenty minutes of Act One, so gimme some slack here.
This is King's first major effort to bypass the printed page entirely and write something directly for the screen since Sleepwalkers. That's, what, eight years? Not that I blame him. The only things that didn't suck about Sleepwalkers were the two female stars - if King hasn't apologized for that one, then he probably should.
Fortunately, this one is way, way better. For that matter, I'd say it's probably second only to The Stand in TV King ('Salem's Lot is also a popular choice, but not mine). It's suspenseful, smart, thought-provoking, well-written and -acted, and for the most part, avoids most of the pitfalls it could have fallen into had it come from a lesser source.
In 1989, the citizens of Little Tall Island are bracing for a big storm - not one of those wussy-ass Gulf Of Mexico storms, though. This is the kind of meteorological monster that dumps so much snow on you that if you stop to tie your shoes, you'll stand up to find yourself buried alive in the middle of the street. So half of the town's 400-or-so people pack up off to the mainland, and the other half brace themselves for the worst. But the worst is worse than they're thinking - the storm has brought along with it a fellow named Andre Linoge.
Linoge is the kind of guy that King fans aren't unfamiliar with, like Randall Flagg without the sense of humor. If there's limits to his power, he's not putting them on display. Linoge knows everybody's secrets, from the mundane ("Your day off from school would have made quite an English composition") to pretty damn horrible (assault, arson, suggestions of incest/pedophilia, etc). And he wants something from Little Tall Island.
Something that King - and many other horror writers - need to learn is that just because a nursery rhyme is said while something bad's going down doesn't make the nursery rhyme scary. For that matter, it just makes the whole affair seem kind of juvenile. Linoge's rhymes ("Born in sin, come on in. Born in lust, something about dust. Something about vice, say it twice") are more annoying than effective too.
Far more successful is the repeated use of the phrase "Give me what I want and I'll go away" - some variation of which has been used by pretty much every bully, tyrant, and abuser in history. Too bad it's halfway through the last act before somebody finally hollers out "WHAT do you want, Linoge?"
There's a great look to this one, with color and vitality drained out of things like they were in Dolores Claiborne. The director is Craig R. Baxley, who's mostly responsible for enjoyably stupid guilty-pleasure action movies like I Come In Peace and Stone Cold. It's also the most accent-heavy of King films, with only DC and Graveyard Shift to compete against it.
Most notable of all are the performances. Standouts are Becky Ann Baker as Ursula (who sets up the town shelter), Tim Daly as the town constable (note how much charisma and quiet authority he shows - and how effective it is when that breaks down), and Julianne Nicholson as Cat, the schoolteacher. But most importantly, Little Tall Island as a town seems completely real - not one single character seems out of place. Sure, there's too many of them for a viewer to really keep track of in one viewing (count how many times you think to yourself "...and who's that?") but it's still some really fantastic ensemble work, some of the best I've seen. I'd love to see more projects set on Little Tall Island - it deserves (perhaps moreso than Derry) to be the focal point of King's work these days. And Colm Feore is just wonderful as the villain. Sure, the rhymes are annoying, but damn, if we'd had him playing Flagg in the first place, The Stand may well have been the best King adaptation, period.
The ending, in true King style, is both disquieting and tear-jerking, letting you think about things both during and long after the show itself. SotC has its weaknesses, like the previously mentioned overuse of rhymes. The first and last act are needlessly drawn out (especially in avery long process in which the townspeople try to answer a question once their decision is reached, as if that answer was ever in doubt by any viewer). And take a "flying" scene, which would've been fine on the written page but is unbearably cheesy (perhaps unavoidably so) on screen. This probably would have worked better as three one-hour episodes.
Still, a really great effort by all involved. But what's with the "Croaton" thing? A reference to Harlan Ellison's "Croatoan"? I don't get it. I'm probably not supposed to.