Gerald's Game (2017)
Mike Flanagan
"Isn't this why we came up here? To spice things up and try and push the boundaries?"
I've never read Stephen King's Gerald's Game. When it came out, I was in late elementary school, and all of my friends were obsessed with scary movies and Stephen King books. Despite being far too young for most of King's work, we would have long discussions about Pet Semetary, IT, Salem's Lot, and Christine. We'd share passages about penises, sex, or masturbation and giggle. A lot of it would go over our heads, but we at least understood the idea of a demonically possessed car, or an evil clown, or zombie cats.
When one of my friends told me he was reading Gerald's Game, I asked what it was like. He said it was about a husband who handcuffs his wife to the bed, and then dies without unlocking her. I figured the story would be about her daring escape (I was also a big fan of MacGyver and young adult survival fiction novels at the time), but my friend said it was more about her going crazy while tied up. He showed me the part of the book where the wife, Jessie, kicks her husband on the dick and he involuntarily pisses everywhere before falling off the bed and cracking his skull open. My friend said that was the best part.
Despite its relatively paltry length for a King novel, I never bothered to pick it up and read it because, A) my friend could not offer a ringing endorsement of it, and B) at the tender age of 11, I couldn't understand why a husband would handcuff his wife to a bed, or why that would make a compelling story. I'd pretty much forgotten about it until Mike Flanagan made this Netflix-produced adaptation. As a jaded 35-year-old who has worked with male offenders of domestic violence, I now understand why a husband might want to chain up his wife despite her protests, but it doesn't make it any easier to watch.
Gerald's Game the film seems to follow the same exact path of the book, if wikipedia is any indication. Jessie and Gerald plan a getaway vacation to do some midlife crisis style boning, and things go horribly wrong. The story takes place mostly in Jessie's mind as she struggles with her past traumas (sexual abuse by her father) and her current situation (brought about by her abusive and unequal relationship with her older husband). Multiple versions of Jessie and Gerald appear to her in hallucinations to either give advice, chide her, or simply countdown to her inevitable fate: starving to death.
There are a lot of shocking visuals in Gerald's Game. Gerald's body slowly decomposes, a stray dog rips off hunks of his flesh, a mysterious figure appears and disappears from the room, and there's a scene near the end that can only be described as the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in a film.
The flashbacks to Jessie's past are a nice touch, and the subtlety of Gerald's abusive nature building up to his twisted rape fantasy game was well done. Some of the themes are a little too on the nose for my taste, but that's probably not the film's fault. Stephen King definitely likes to hammer his symbolism hard.
The one aspect of the film that stuck out like a sore thumb was the post-script. It feels a little hasty and underthought, tying up loose ends that nobody really cared about to begin with. Again, this is a mainstay of King's writing, and I'm guessing Mike Flanagan cared about a faithful adaptation. I just wish Flanagan had gone at it a bit differently and edited the ending to suit the film, rather than try to keep up with the novel word-for-word.
I don't know that there's a ton more to talk about. It's a good movie; a solid 7, and definitely worth your time. Plus it's free on Netflix, so you can't go wrong.
I honestly didn't plan for this to be two Stephen King-inspired films in a row, but so be it.
The first Creepshow movie is one of my favorite Halloween traditions. It's funny, it's scary, it's super gory, and the interstitial plot with a (doubtless) drunk and angry Tom Atkins getting his comeuppance is a unique and brilliant touch. Creepshow is George Romero at his most playful, and it's a lovely thing. I have no doubt that there will be an upcoming Spooktober review of it soon!
Creepshow II, however, is like the less intelligent and more uncouth cousin. That's not to say that it's bad, just that it's...well...different. We're all hoping that it gets its act together, straightens up, and flies right, but we love it anyway.
It's the same idea as the first Creepshow: a very basic interstitial plot exists to ease the transition between horror vignettes (this time there are only three), and everything is heavily influenced by and lovingly crafted to pay homage to the pre-code horror comics of the 1940's and 50's.
My local library branch has a pretty decent graphic novel section that is fun to peruse during cold and snowy Michigan winter days. One of their items is a compendium of old EC horror comics (things like Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear), which I've flipped through a couple of times. They're pretty interesting, because of the era in which they were produced. While Superman was flying around and stopping steaming locomotives from running over Lois Lane, Tales from the Crypt was spinning yarns of murder gone wrong, or cannibals eating explorers. It's all tame by today's standards, but I can imagine they caused some consternation way back when.
The stories in the comics were incredibly basic: three or four page stories that had little in the way of exposition and got to the gory good stuff quickly. The payoff was usually a bloody mess, and involved the characters being bluntly undone by their very basic flaws. If a story dealt with a man drowning his spouse, you could expect the last panel to be her water-logged corpse strangling him. Not very subtle, but still wryly effective. And the art went a long way to make the stories compelling.
Plus, each story was introduced by some sort of ghoulish jokester taking on the voice of the writer. This is where the Cryptkeeper comes from on the TV version of Tales from the Crypt, and it's also why he was so punny. The comics had a very cheeky sense of humor about dark topics, probably much to the delight of slightly off kids who grew up in the 50's (like Stephen King and George Romero).
Creepshow II really pushes the comic book angle, and an animated character (The Creep) sets up and summarizes each of the vignettes for the audience with a lot of gallows humor. This is a departure from the first film, which just shows a comic book page and gets right down to business.
The vignettes in Creepshow II are super basic, much like the comic book stories were. We have a cigar store Indian coming to life and murdering some punks, a group of teens trapped on a floating jetty and being picked off by a floating goo monster, and a rich woman murdering a hitchhiker during a hit-and-run. None of the stories have anything in the way of a moral (unless you consider "don't murder people" a moral), and offer few surprises.
The joy of Creepshow II really comes from how faithfully it adapts those cheesy comics of old for the movies. Want to see some hoodlum teens get their just desserts? A giant Native American statue monster can abide. Tired of those pot smoking punk kids playing their rock music too loud? Here's a goo monster to dissolve them. Angry at the rich woman in the Mercedes who cut you off? This mangled hitchhiker should take care of her.
And there's some snazzy filmmaking along the way, too. I love the way that this scene is shot:
But in the end, it's not as satisfying or complete as the first film. I know that there's a belief among some cult-film lovers online that Creepshow II is the better movie because of its goofiness and treatment of the original comics, but in my eyes it doesn't quite hold up.
If you've got a lot of time on your hands, or if you've never seen the second one, you could do worse during October. Just don't expect to be blown away. It's available for free on YouTube if you're interested.
When one of my friends told me he was reading Gerald's Game, I asked what it was like. He said it was about a husband who handcuffs his wife to the bed, and then dies without unlocking her. I figured the story would be about her daring escape (I was also a big fan of MacGyver and young adult survival fiction novels at the time), but my friend said it was more about her going crazy while tied up. He showed me the part of the book where the wife, Jessie, kicks her husband on the dick and he involuntarily pisses everywhere before falling off the bed and cracking his skull open. My friend said that was the best part.
Despite its relatively paltry length for a King novel, I never bothered to pick it up and read it because, A) my friend could not offer a ringing endorsement of it, and B) at the tender age of 11, I couldn't understand why a husband would handcuff his wife to a bed, or why that would make a compelling story. I'd pretty much forgotten about it until Mike Flanagan made this Netflix-produced adaptation. As a jaded 35-year-old who has worked with male offenders of domestic violence, I now understand why a husband might want to chain up his wife despite her protests, but it doesn't make it any easier to watch.
Gerald's Game the film seems to follow the same exact path of the book, if wikipedia is any indication. Jessie and Gerald plan a getaway vacation to do some midlife crisis style boning, and things go horribly wrong. The story takes place mostly in Jessie's mind as she struggles with her past traumas (sexual abuse by her father) and her current situation (brought about by her abusive and unequal relationship with her older husband). Multiple versions of Jessie and Gerald appear to her in hallucinations to either give advice, chide her, or simply countdown to her inevitable fate: starving to death.
There are a lot of shocking visuals in Gerald's Game. Gerald's body slowly decomposes, a stray dog rips off hunks of his flesh, a mysterious figure appears and disappears from the room, and there's a scene near the end that can only be described as the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in a film.
The flashbacks to Jessie's past are a nice touch, and the subtlety of Gerald's abusive nature building up to his twisted rape fantasy game was well done. Some of the themes are a little too on the nose for my taste, but that's probably not the film's fault. Stephen King definitely likes to hammer his symbolism hard.
The one aspect of the film that stuck out like a sore thumb was the post-script. It feels a little hasty and underthought, tying up loose ends that nobody really cared about to begin with. Again, this is a mainstay of King's writing, and I'm guessing Mike Flanagan cared about a faithful adaptation. I just wish Flanagan had gone at it a bit differently and edited the ending to suit the film, rather than try to keep up with the novel word-for-word.
Summary:
Creepshow II (1987)
Michael Gornick
"Thanks for the ride, lady!"
I honestly didn't plan for this to be two Stephen King-inspired films in a row, but so be it.
The first Creepshow movie is one of my favorite Halloween traditions. It's funny, it's scary, it's super gory, and the interstitial plot with a (doubtless) drunk and angry Tom Atkins getting his comeuppance is a unique and brilliant touch. Creepshow is George Romero at his most playful, and it's a lovely thing. I have no doubt that there will be an upcoming Spooktober review of it soon!
Creepshow II, however, is like the less intelligent and more uncouth cousin. That's not to say that it's bad, just that it's...well...different. We're all hoping that it gets its act together, straightens up, and flies right, but we love it anyway.
It's the same idea as the first Creepshow: a very basic interstitial plot exists to ease the transition between horror vignettes (this time there are only three), and everything is heavily influenced by and lovingly crafted to pay homage to the pre-code horror comics of the 1940's and 50's.
My local library branch has a pretty decent graphic novel section that is fun to peruse during cold and snowy Michigan winter days. One of their items is a compendium of old EC horror comics (things like Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear), which I've flipped through a couple of times. They're pretty interesting, because of the era in which they were produced. While Superman was flying around and stopping steaming locomotives from running over Lois Lane, Tales from the Crypt was spinning yarns of murder gone wrong, or cannibals eating explorers. It's all tame by today's standards, but I can imagine they caused some consternation way back when.
The stories in the comics were incredibly basic: three or four page stories that had little in the way of exposition and got to the gory good stuff quickly. The payoff was usually a bloody mess, and involved the characters being bluntly undone by their very basic flaws. If a story dealt with a man drowning his spouse, you could expect the last panel to be her water-logged corpse strangling him. Not very subtle, but still wryly effective. And the art went a long way to make the stories compelling.
Plus, each story was introduced by some sort of ghoulish jokester taking on the voice of the writer. This is where the Cryptkeeper comes from on the TV version of Tales from the Crypt, and it's also why he was so punny. The comics had a very cheeky sense of humor about dark topics, probably much to the delight of slightly off kids who grew up in the 50's (like Stephen King and George Romero).
Creepshow II really pushes the comic book angle, and an animated character (The Creep) sets up and summarizes each of the vignettes for the audience with a lot of gallows humor. This is a departure from the first film, which just shows a comic book page and gets right down to business.
The vignettes in Creepshow II are super basic, much like the comic book stories were. We have a cigar store Indian coming to life and murdering some punks, a group of teens trapped on a floating jetty and being picked off by a floating goo monster, and a rich woman murdering a hitchhiker during a hit-and-run. None of the stories have anything in the way of a moral (unless you consider "don't murder people" a moral), and offer few surprises.
The joy of Creepshow II really comes from how faithfully it adapts those cheesy comics of old for the movies. Want to see some hoodlum teens get their just desserts? A giant Native American statue monster can abide. Tired of those pot smoking punk kids playing their rock music too loud? Here's a goo monster to dissolve them. Angry at the rich woman in the Mercedes who cut you off? This mangled hitchhiker should take care of her.
And there's some snazzy filmmaking along the way, too. I love the way that this scene is shot:
But in the end, it's not as satisfying or complete as the first film. I know that there's a belief among some cult-film lovers online that Creepshow II is the better movie because of its goofiness and treatment of the original comics, but in my eyes it doesn't quite hold up.
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