Where to watch Needful Things
2 Stars
Castle Rock, New England, is a nice place to live and grow and Sheriff Alan Pangborn moves from the big city to the town expecting a quiet life. When Leland Gaunt opens the store Needful Things, he seems to have the object of desire for each dweller. He charges small amounts to the things but requests a practical joke for each of them against another inhabitant. Soon hell breaks loose in town with deaths, violence and riot and Sheriff Pangborn discovers that Leland Gaunt is the devil himself. Further, Gaunt is manipulating the population like puppets, exploring the weakness and greed of each person.
Needful Things looks great. The film has wonderful photography and builds an appropriately menacing atmosphere, but the longer the movie plays out, the less engaging it becomes. Fraser C. Heston has done a good job visualizing Stephen King’s book, adapted by scripter W.D. Richter. The director was right to cast Sydow and Harris as the opposing opponents; it’s the screenplay that falters while heading to the overblown conclusion. Needful Things is one of the most frustrating of King’s film interpretations, up there with Dreamcatcher, because it begins so promisingly and is stacked with capable actors.
The story behind the central concept needed a bigger canvas to play out on. A mini-series format would have been ideal to flesh out all the characters and incidents, and would have left room to inject a bit of humor to offset the increasingly dreary tone of the picture as it goes on. Ed Harris, Max Von Sydow, and J.T. Walsh give their all in a film that is dazzling on a technical level but emotionally lifeless and narratively redundant.
Directed by: Fraser C. Heston
Written by: Stephen King, W.D. Richter
Starring: Max von Sydow, Ed Harris, Bonnie Bedelia