At a cursory glance, Hulu’s new exclusive Castle Rock sounds like a grand slam. It teams up Stephen King with JJ Abrams. There are tons of Easter Eggs from the King universe. There’s Sissy Spacek. The former entertainment editor for the LA Times left to write for the show. But, this thing is drier than dirt.
I’ve now watched four episodes of Castle Rock and am still waiting for something to happen. There are a couple of stock horror scenes. For example, a man jumps to his death in a sequence that’s straight out of the babysitter’s death in The Omen.
The story involves four characters. A criminal defense lawyer and his mother (Sissy Spacek), a man who is found down in a hole and locked in a cage below Shawshank prison, and a telepathic girl and her sister. The story jumps between each of the four characters as it tells the story. The characters aren’t really linked between one another,
Stephen King recently tweeted that fans shouldn’t try to dig for Easter Eggs in the show but should just appreciate the story on its own terms. The problem is that the show is remarkably slow moving. Nothing at all is happening. And that’s my major complaint. All of this promise of something amazing and the show has turned into a slew of sequences that just inch their way along.
The adaptation of King for the small and big screen have had a problematic existence. Hulu’s JJ Abrams/King version of 11/23/63 was largely ignored when it came out at the beginning of 2016. So, Hulu efforts to turn King’s work into TV shows have failed before.
At the end of the fourth episode, there’s a jarring shoot-out sequence, but that’s the most thrills and excitement (maybe the only) that Castle Rock has offered so far. Is Castle Rock going to pick up or is it going to shuffle off until its canceled after its first season? I don’t know. I’m going to keep watching. Mostly because I love King. Not because I’m a fan of the show. Because right now, there’s little reason to be.
Atrocious
Bad
X – Awful
Okay
Good
Great
Lesson learned: The biggest lesson I learned from Castle Rock isn’t a lesson so much as a realization. I’ve now watched about 4 hours of Castle Rock and nothing has happened. This is on the “test your boundaries” line of my patience, but the show easily got away with this for a couple of episodes. If I watched a movie for four hours and nothing happened, I’d be pissed off. I’m aggravated if I watch a film for half an hour and little happens. But with television, we have much higher patience. Castle Rock is not something that would work as a film with this much lead-in. That said, I still hope that the show rewards viewers who have sat through 4 hours of exposition and a snail-like pace.
The 22nd Row 