I just love a good Stephen King baddie. And Max von Sydow’s Leland Gaunt is one of his best – he’s elegant, sinister, and having the time of his life watching Castle Rock burn.
It’s a masterclass in restrained villainy.
He’s the sort of evil that just nudges the door open and lets a person’s worst instincts take over. All he needs is a well-cut suit and an uncanny ability to know exactly what you want. It’s all too easy.
This is an upper-mid-tier Stephen King adaptation, no doubt. Too much of the book is excised in favour of a tidy focus group-friendly running time. While it doesn’t reach the heights of Misery or Pet Sematary, it’s a hell of a lot of fun and it lands unmistakably in King’ court. It’s got the Vendredi’s antique store thing going on, full of cursed knick-knacks, but it’s really about people being at their worst.
That’s when King is at his most fascinating – the way he pits the darkness inside us against the sobering light of day. The protective mother battling the possessed, raging alcoholic in The Shining. The level-headed skeptics versus the reactionary zealots in The Mist. The bullied outcast who discovers power and gets consumed by it in Carrie. Stephen King knows that the real monsters aren’t vampires or killer clowns.
Hell is other people, with all their mundane flaws, fears, and petty desires.
And that’s where Needful Things (1993). creeps me out. It shows just how easily people can turn on each other when given the slightest push. It’s the kind of horror story we often find in history books… and the news. -Pop