Editorials
“Castle Rock”: How the Best Stephen King Adaptation Could Be One That Isn’t Really a Stephen King Adaptation
Stephen King is a state of mind. The author has written nearly 60 novels, a half-dozen non-fiction books and hundreds of short stories. In doing so, he’s built his own multiverse, one that dates back to 1974’s Carrie all the way to this summer’s The Outsider. That’s a rich well to draw from, and Castle Rock – the new Hulu series from Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason – is wise to not limit itself to an adaptation of just one of those texts. Instead we get a show inspired by Stephen King’s entire world – and that just might make it the best possible onscreen version of a Stephen King story.
The series takes place in King’s fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, with at least one character recognizable from his works in Alan Pangborn (Scott Glenn), Castle Rock’s former sheriff, whom Constant Readers will remember from The Dark Half, Four Past Midnight’s “The Sun Dog,” Needful Things and casual mentions in Bag of Bones and Gerald’s Game. But many of the other characters peopling this world are new to us: Melanie Lynskey’s Molly Strand, André Holland’s Henry Deaver, Terry O’Quinn’s Dale Lacy, Sissy Spacek’s Ruth Deaver and Jane Levy’s Jackie all seem like archetypal King characters (the psychic, the tortured but good-hearted attorney, the warden with a dark secret, the grieving widow, the smart-ass neighbor), but they can’t claim any specific King book as their origin.
Castle Rock –“Severance” – Episode 101 — Henry Deaver, a death-row attorney, confronts his dark past when an anonymous call lures him back to his hometown of Castle Rock, Maine. Ruth Deaver (Sissy Spacek) and Henry Deaver (Andre Holland), shown. (Photo by: Patrick Harbron/Hulu)
And we’re given an extra-dose of Kingism through the casting of actors we know from other King adaptations: Spacek made her name as Carrie White in Brian De Palma’s Carrie, while Castle Rock’s Bill Skarsgard gained fans as Pennywise in last year’s It. King diehards might even remember that Lynskey starred, early in her career, as Rachel Wheaton in the 2002 King miniseries Rose Red. With a population of recognizable faces playing familiar characters, Castle Rock managed to put us in a King frame of mind by the time we saw the first trailer.
With every adaptation of a beloved property, there’s risk of disappointment. Favorite characters don’t look or act or sound the way they do in our minds. Budgetary constraints test the limits of our imagination. Runtime constraints make plot omissions necessary. Arguably the best Stephen King adaptation, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, famously left the author cold. Inarguably the worst Stephen King adaptation, Nikolaj Arcel’s The Dark Tower, disappointed generations of fans who had been waiting for a version of King’s fantasy epic to hit the small or big screen for decades. Even those adaptations that land squarely in the middle of this scale – for instance, Hulu’s last King attempt, 11.22.63, based on a later and thus less iconic King novel – are primed to piss off somebody. (This particular somebody, for instance. I was never going to give the miniseries a shot the moment they announced James Franco as Jake Epping, because James Franco is not my Jake Epping.) You can’t make everybody happy with a King adaptation, because everyone loves something different about his work.
Therein lies the wisdom of Castle Rock’s loosey-goosey approach: we get the atmosphere of a King story – the quaint yet ominous small-town spookiness, the depths and heights of humanity challenged by a supernatural crisis of some sort, not to mention the easter eggs pointing to Cujo, The Shining, Dolores Claiborne and more in every episode – but none of the baggage that comes with adapting someone’s favorite book. Fan biases are diminished, expectations are moderate, minds are open. We’re able to enjoy Castle Rock as its own thing, instead of a lesser version of something we love. It’s the perfect solution for Constant Readers with very strong opinions about their favorite writer. We can enjoy all of the best parts of a Stephen King book without growing irate when a favorite passage is cut for time – or when, as just a for-instance, a director decides that what Dark Tower fans need to see most after thirty-five years of waiting is The Man in Black in a damn apron.
Of course, there could be a dark side to the open-endedness of Castle Rock’s game plan. The series shares a producer with LOST in J.J. Abrams, and there’s every chance that the compelling mystery that’s been developed in the four episodes I’ve seen will peter out in an unsatisfying conclusion. But at least it’ll be given that chance. Fans aren’t closing their minds to the possibility of this series based solely on a casting decision that doesn’t suit their pre-conceived ideas. We’re ready to love Castle Rock, and the first four episodes don’t disappoint.
Castle Rock — “Severance” — Episode 101 — Henry Deaver, a death-row attorney, confronts his dark past when an anonymous call lures him back to his hometown of Castle Rock, Maine. Bill Skarsgard, shown. (Photo by: Patrick Harbron/Hulu)
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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