Lots of real life stuff got in the way this week, yet, much like Castle Rock in the film, we linger on here at SwS.

Below cut, more, etc.

So, Needful Things has a lot going for it in the Hollywood sense. Big name cast of serious actors and actresses, Max Von Sydow as your villain, Ed Harris as your Designated Leading Man. (Max Von Sydow will return to Sundays with Stephen in Apt Pupil, by the way).

The setup is also full of potential: a mysterious peddler comes to a small New England town (the fictional Castle Rock, Maine, naturally) and offers anyone who enters his store their heart’s desire – for a small favor.

It’s not much of a spoiler to state that said peddler, who goes by the name Leland Gaunt, isn’t acting with the community’s best interests at heart, or that his favors, while seemingly small and inconsequential acts of malice on their own, are crafted to wreak larger havoc. The idea that even the best of places, a ‘good town’ full of ‘decent people’ is a few careful acts away from anarchy and violence is a powerful one, and played with subtlety could be quite a terrifying story.

Instead of tackling that story with a scapel, Needful Things brings an axe (literally, toward the end). Sigh.

You know things are headed in a dangerous direction when Mr. Gaunt picks his first victm, a middle-school boy who loves baseball memorabilia. Gaunt just happens to have the very card he wants, autographed out to him, or someone sharing his precisely spelled name, which seems rather convenient. There’s a little hinting done that the boy, Brian’s need to collect baseball cards reflects something more than simple greed, but before we get to any character development Gaunt uses some magical blue lightning CG to befuddle the kid into doing his bidding. Ahh, CG. Is there nothing your sloppy application can’t ruin?

This pattern repeats several times, with Gaunt pulling miraculously rare objects out of his butt and placing them out in plain view, usually spot-lit, as each member of town comes to his store, and he gives them away, or sells them for next to nothing, along with in each case a demand to do perform devious prank or otherwise unsavory favor. Carnies at the county fair put more effort into their hucksterism than Gaunt.

In case you didn’t get that Gaunt is evil by this point, the director treats us to a few more feats of CG magic, teleportation, and Gaunt starts sporting some yellow fangy teeth and long, Nosferatu press on nails. Oh, and he sits by the fire cackling a lot.

Groan.

The only person Gaunt doesn’t get his talons into is the county sheriff, Alan Pangborn (who we last saw in The Dark Half being the Worst Cop in History). Pangborn claims to have everything he wants, and hints at a dark past in the big city, before rushing off to yell mild profanity at a lot of people as his town erupts in crime scene after crime scene. Pangborn’s fuse is extremely short for a perfectly contented man.

Meanwhile, Gaunt orchestrates a feud between two local crazywomen using Brian and some nasty pranks to spread suspicion. He then pays off a town drunk to skin a dog alive, which a reasonable person might take to be a good sign that you’re not dealing with a normal shopkeep, and strings a local businessman along until he turns to spree killing over a gambling debt.

By this point the interesting premise that Decent People are One Step from Savagery has been largely eclipsed by CG hypnotism and Gaunt preying on children and the mentally ill, so they ditch it entirely by having him start a miniature Northern Ireland in Castle Rock using time bombs. Seriously. Time bombs.

Pangborn figures out Gaunt’s plan, in part because Gaunt has a large newspaper collection of all the places he’s been and caused mayhem. We’re led to believe that Gaunt, aka… Satan… caused World War II, various floods, earthquakes, the atomic bombs being dropped on Japan, etc. A man, or thing, that can cause global conflagration has decided to slum it arranging a few petty murders.

(Though, to be fair, he later states explicitly that this isn’t his best work.)

So we get treated to a confrontation between Good and Evil as Pangborn speechifies the town into blaming Gaunt for their troubles. Here it gets interesting, as Pangborn chooses to lay all blame for the horrors his town has seen on Gaunt — who quite reasonably defends himself by pointing out that he made his bargains simply and straightforwardly, and that nobody was coerced or tricked.

Well, outside of the children and mentally ill. Still, most of the people who suddenly confess to various wicked deeds have no excuses, until Pangborn offers them one – the Devil made them do it!

Having been absolved of their sins, they turn half-heartedly on Gaunt, there’s another big explosion, a denouement, some spooky threats, and then Pangborn lets Gaunt leave, off to visit destruction and mayhem on others, so long as it isn’t in his town.

I guess that’s an ending?

*shrug*

This was disappointing, really. The magical special effects and goofy teeth and cackling in the dark undermine what could have been a sober, thoughtful movie about the essential good or evil of everyday people. I guess they prefered to make a jazzy little special effects driven movie instead, and hey, who doesn’t love a good explosion, right?

Feh. Sydow and Harris are wasted here, and they even take two hours to spin this one out, so you’re out an extra half hour you could have used to fold laundry or something.

Next Week: Shawshank, whee!!
Last Week: The Dark Half, another ‘feh’ movie.