Stephen King's Desperation

I read Desperation and I read The Regulators. Both books feature some of the same characters, though I have yet to figure out how they relate in a timeline of any sort. Actually, I think it's just King doing variations on a theme. Desperation was written as Stephen King, The Regulators was written under the moniker of Richard Bachman. In any case, I liked both books, with Desperation being my favorite of the two by far.

But I'm not talking about either of those two books right now. I want to talk about the movie version of Desperation, which aired as a three-hour gig on ABC the 23rd of May. In the past, some movie versions of Stephen's work have come off a little flat compared to the books—understandable considering the scope of most of his Steve's books.

Desperation didn't suffer at all. My wife didn't enjoy it, but she isn't fond of the overall story anyway, and she thought the movie was too slow paced. I don't agree. The story worked for me. I loved it in the book, I dug what they did with it for TV. It could have been more gruesome, but it was a made-for-TV movie.

Without going into the nitty-gritty, Desperation is the story of a group of people stuck in the town of Desperation, doing battle against an ancient evil recently released when an old mine is reopened. It's good stuff.

The movie version pretty much follows the book. The length of the movie allowed just the right amount of time to establish setting, define character, cover the backstory, and hit all the major plot points of the book. None of the great scenes in the book were overlooked, and I was happily surprised when each character and scene came off as I'd pictured them while reading the book. That rarely happens for me. The TV movie was like reading the book with pictures.

The teleplay was done by Stephen King, the movie was directed by Mick Garris, creator and director of the Master of Horror series as well as Stephen King's Riding the Bullet.

This is a good one. Check it out.