Stephen King is the undisputed “King of Horror,” a prolific wordsmith who’s published 65 novels and nearly 200 stories, selling more than 400 million copies to date. He’s also the third most adapted author in history (just behind Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare) with innumerable page-to-screen versions of his work. And at 75, he hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down (his new novel Holly comes out next month and he’s become a biting cultural critic on social media).
Daphne Baiwir’s new documentary King on Screen takes on a large task, perhaps too large: exploring the movies and TV shows adapted from King’s writing. It’s a sincere attempt to understand the author via interviews with the filmmakers who adapted his stories, but unfortunately, there’s nothing incredibly consequential here.
The doc opens with Baiwir herself walking through set pieces filled with Stephen King easter eggs. It’s a charming sequence that sets the tone for a lighthearted affair before becoming a traditional assemblage of talking heads who comment on King’s work and what attracted them to his stories. Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Mist), Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep), and Mick Garris (TV versions of The Stand and The Shining), among many others, are interviewed alongside clips from the movie adaptations, personal stories, behind-the-scenes footage, and more.
As we quickly learn, King exploded into the zeitgeist of American letters and film after the movie Carrie. Apparently, most people didn’t know about the novel or the writer himself until Brian De Palma’s landmark film landed in 1976. King and his adaptations were discovered synonymously. After Carrie’s success, King’s name popped up in films and television miniseries at an excessive rate. The doc also makes the interesting point, albeit too quickly, that one can track the trajectory of the horror genre through his influence. Inadvertently, the horror writer helped…
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