Adventures in Streaming: Is bad Stephen King still good?

With more than 100 movies and miniseries adaptations inspired by his work, Stephen King is responsible for enough cinematic source material to rival the Bible.

This is not to say King projects are successful. But even some King films that bombed have endured more than some of the hits, the most obvious one being The Shawshank Redemption (on Crave), the prison drama which failed upon its release in 1994, but gained a passionate following on cable.

In the streaming realm, that dynamic may be at work again with Edgar Wright’s adaptation of The Running Man, which failed to make back its budget in theatres when it released in cinemas last year but has since emerged as a favourite watch on Crave.

The dystopian thriller is technically a remake of a cheesy 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (streaming on Paramount+). Befitting the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Wright’s take on the material is more boisterously cinematic, and more hard-hitting in the satire of its premise: a tyrannical government employs a killer game show as one strategy to bread-and-circus the general population into complacency. (In an era where UFC fights are staged on the White House lawn to celebrate the president’s birthday, let’s just say it rings true.)

Glen Powell plays Ben Richards, a well-intentioned man who is desperate to save his chronically ill daughter. His anger and his penchant for defying authority catches the interest of TV exec Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) who succeeds in casting Ben despite the fact the show kills most of its contestants.

The film has its issues, including an unsatisfying denouement (in which a masked character explains it all to you) and the fact that Powell isn’t really a sympathetic presence.

It is one of cinema’s great conundrums that, despite being a hopelessly wooden actor, Schwarzenegger still somehow managed to get you onside.

But Wright knows how to stage an action set piece, and he fashions some doozies, all in the service of a satire that convincingly demonstrates the system is rigged against us.

If that is not downer enough for you, get a load of The Long Walk (2025, also on Crave). Like The Running Man, this movie was taken from a novel by Richard Bachman, King’s off-brand nom de plume.

King began writing the book in the 1960s. Reflecting the don’t-trust-anyone-over-30 ethos of the period, it depicts a competition in an alternate dystopian America in which 50 young men are plucked from all over the country to compete in a gruelling death march: if any competitor fails to keep to the three-miles-per-hour pace, he gets his “ticket” in the form of a bullet to the head, as promised by the film’s heavy “The Major” (Mark Hamill).

Of course, it’s a parable of the Vietnam War, in which the brutal sacrifice of young men’s lives is demanded in the name of serving some nebulous greater good.

Of the movie’s 50 competitors (down from 100 in the novel), the film focuses on Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries (David Jonsson). They share benign, thoughtful natures and a deep contempt for the competition in which they are partaking.

Hoffman and Jonsson hold the centre of the film. Hoffman has a natural charm, providing much-needed warmth in the chilling premise. It turns out director Francis Lawrence, best known for The Hunger Games, is a more potent director when the dystopian action is stripped to its bare bones.

Ironically, it is horror maestro Mike Flanagan who helmed one of the most uplifting King adaptations in recent years: The Life of Chuck (2024, on Prime).

Despite an opening segment depicting a global apocalypse — and a supernatural component in the third act — this isn’t a film built around horror beats. It marches to the beat of a different drummer altogether — quite literally in its second act.

Adventurously constructed around three seemingly disparate stories, it starts with the end of the world, in which citizens bear witness to baffling events both horrifying and puzzling: the mysterious preponderance of billboards and TV ads sporting an image of a benign-looking accountant type, bearing the legend: “Charles Krantz. 39 Great Years. Thanks Chuck.”

Who is Charles Krantz? The inspired second segment tentatively answers that question with Tom Hiddleston’s titular Chuck. Finally, all questions are answered in the third segment, in which we learn the life history of Chuck, starting with a tragedy that sees young Chuck (Jacob Tremblay) being raised by loving grandparents (Hamill and Mia Sara.)

In his other horror projects, such as the vampire series Midnight Mass, Flanagan demonstrated a gift for portraying human frailty in a way that makes it all the more devastating when his characters meet terrible genre fates.

Even without the supernatural hoo-hah, Flanagan’s gift holds firm here. His film is ultimately a celebration of creativity, whether that takes the form of brazenly dancing in the street, or engaging in a secret creative process for an audience of one.

randall.king.arts@gmail.com