What makes a good Stephen King adaptation? The question has no easy answer, though not for lack of a sizable sample. At this point King has more than 250 writing credits on the Internet Movie Database. That number is slightly inflated by his practice of letting aspiring filmmakers license some of his stories for $1 on the condition that their work won’t be sold. But even so, there have been a lot of movies and TV shows inspired by King’s stories over the years, a trend that shows no sign of abating thanks to the recent success of It. Shakespeare and the Bible may have him beat, but they should watch out.
Reconciling the real with the bizarre can be hard work, as Mary Lambert demonstrates with Pet Sematary (Sat 7/28, midnight), her 1989 adaptation of one of King’s bleakest novels. A doctor moves to rural Maine to take a teaching job, only to find that a nearby pet cemetery brings dead people back to life. Working from King’s own script, Lambert stays true to the plot of the novel and creates some truly unnerving images, but she loses most of the book’s thematic subtext about the dangers of denying death (less-than-memorable lead performances from Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby don’t help). By contrast, Fraser C. Heston’s Needful Things (Sat 7/28, 9:30 PM) suffers from a shortage of scares but benefits from Max von Sydow’s colorful performance as an antiques dealer, newly arrived in Castle Rock (and possibly the devil incarnate), who turns the townspeople against each other. Tonally it’s all over the place, and Heston, like Lambert, neglects the thematic possibilities lying just beneath the story’s surface.
Fri 7/27-Sat 7/28. Music Box 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com, $12 per film, passes $40
