Tag / stephen king

by Jaime Rebanal

‘Pet Sematary’ Review: Trades a Poignant Grief Metaphor for Generic Horror Fodder

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I’ve yet to read Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, but from what I do know about it, it’s a novel all about how grief after the loss of a loved one can take on the form of one’s own worst nightmares. That alone would cover the basics of what defines Stephen King’s stories, for he’s a writer who has always been able to come up with wonderful concepts for horror literature, but they don’t quite always work yet his name has only ever remained popular enough in order to spawn numerous film adaptations over the years. This is the second adaptation of Pet Sematary to grace the screen after Mary Lambert’s 1989 take, with a screenplay by Stephen King himself. Based on the reputation that I’ve already known said film adaptation would have acquired I was hoping that at the very least a new take would feel more enticing but everything that has made the core concept so thoughtful and wonderful is all gone in this version. It came to that point where I don’t really know if this feels anything like what I would imagine Stephen King would be writing, because it only ever really rang as generic horror fodder.

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by Jaime Rebanal

It (2017) – Review

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Stephen King’s It has always been a difficult novel to adapt to another medium as proven by the original miniseries which has only begun to show how terribly it has aged over the years (I haven’t been able to make it through the miniseries after reading the novel for myself and finding it absolutely fantastic). The notion that a feature film based entirely on the first half of the novel would have indicated some promise but at the same time I was skeptical because Andy Muschietti hasn’t impressed me with his prior directorial effort, Mama. But it wouldn’t be fair to expect a film that gets down to what the novel had achieved, so on its own ground I enjoyed what Muschietti had made here, despite obvious room for improvement.

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by Jaime Rebanal

The Dark Tower – Review

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Adapting Stephen King to film is a complicated case, knowing that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had taken liberties with its source material to the scorn of King himself. With that having been said, it still remains the best of the many adaptations that King’s work has spawned, but perhaps the case with “Stephen King done right” as proven by the Shining miniseries would only have proven itself disastrous, so fan reactions to The Dark Tower could set expectations in place for they didn’t get what they would have wanted as a means of introducing a story they love to newcomers. Coming in with a newcomer’s perspective for I’ve only read the first book in the series and wasn’t a fan, I already feel the anger that such an audience would have felt to see something they loved bastardized the way Nikolaj Arcel did so here.

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