Kings books adapt to tv readily and over the decades we have had a lot of motion pictures based on his work. These series came out in 2020 and it is based on a book that was published in 2018. I was curious to see how this compared to his staple from the 90s and earlier, of which we have all seen plenty.
The story here is extremely simple, with a highly obscured plot and drawn out scenes. Characters come and go after completing their task of seeding new information to move things along, which is also a King normalcy. Sadly this creates some unpleasant disappearances of characters and skip overs of scenes that should have been included. There are also several details that are shown to the viewer that will connect things before the cast itself realizes it. It is a good touch as it engages the audience and makes you feel as if you are participating in some manner with the script. Speaking of script, i cannot say how close it is to the book, not having read it but it feels very much like a King story.
The first 2 episodes are the best and the strongest. After that, the show plateaus and never grasps that energy and suspense that it had prior. You are just chugging along it feels like and too many filler scenes that really have no purpose come to mind.
The script grapples with generic good vs evil and handling grief and how it impacts people. In the way it does that it does try to tie it into the main plot but does not do a good job. It feels as if you are watching two different things. An occult movie and some drama counselor relationship soap opera, complete with irrational and downright annoying at times characters.
The series is very bad at keeping track of time and you will be lost very soon until you have no idea how much time has passed. There are flashback scenes that suffer from the same issue even though on some they tell you how long ago it occurred, but in the end it does not help with "present day" timing. I am not a fan of productions that obfuscate timelines. I consider it a cheap easy way out for the writers to not have to be accountable about what they put in. Keeping a coherent timeline can really become a chore so they often distort it until it is not a factor. Plenty of that here.
By the time we get to the final episode I had one question only. It was a simple question based on the sum of everything that occurred and everything that was about to happen. That question was, how do you explain everything to everybody else. That plot hole was coming closer and closer. Well, surprisingly somebody in production had the same question and they do a few scenes where they do cover that. Sadly it feels that the only reason it works based on what we are shown is because everybody else in the story universe is actually quite stupid so they buy the absolute nonsense that the recurring characters sell at the end. None of it would hold any water but for the purposes of covering that gaping plot hole, it stitches it a bit. I will give them credit for realizing and trying to do something about it.
As a last note, in reference to the timeline in the series, when on earth is this supposed to take place... The universe is an odd mix of 80s, lots of 90s with current day technology sprinkled in there. Obviously it is not supposed to be any particular date but the whole staging is so deliberate in achieving this weird mix of eras that it made me think if there was a reason behind it at all, and i could not find one. I have to scrap it up to visual distraction and tailoring things to have just the right tech when you need it but not enough to actually have an impact. That's a lot of timeline cheating in my book.
7\10 Worth watching.
