Editorials
Sorry ‘Doctor Sleep,’ But ‘Maximum Overdrive’ is Still the Best Stephen King Trailer!
Everyone loves a good Stephen King trailer, and the new preview for Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Doctor Sleep is a great one. Atmospheric and spooky, with impressive recreations of Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining, the teaser gets audiences in the right frame of mind to remember something timeless, and get excited for something brand new.
And yet, as good as the trailer for Doctor Sleep is, it’s nothing compared to the teaser for Maximum Overdrive.
This a masterpiece of self-adulation, an ironic classic in its own right. Because as much as it boasts about the overwhelming terror that awaits you in Maximum Overdrive – a film about trucks that get possessed by aliens, lest we forget – we all know how this movie actually turned out. It may be awesome as hell, but it ain’t “scary.”
To fully appreciate the absolute marvel that is the Maximum Overdrive trailer, we are going to have to analyze it piece by piece, as though we have never seen it or the finished movie before.
First, imagine yourself in a movie theater in 1986.
By this point, Stephen King adaptations have been mostly excellent – with hits like Carrie, The Dead Zone, Christine and The Shining – and the announcement of a new one, which often came in the theater (since the internet and social media weren’t really a thing yet), would have come as a surprise.
The trailer begins with Stephen King himself, the best-selling horror author, standing in front of a giant Green Goblin head. Yes, that Green Goblin. The bad guy from the Spider-Man comics. Needless to say, it’s one hell of an image.
“Hello,” he says. “I’m Stephen King. I’ve written several motion pictures but I want to tell you about a movie called Maximum Overdrive, which is the first one I’ve directed.”
Ho. ly. Crap. Stephen King has directed his own horror movie. The master of horror has taken a seat behind the camera. This, we are expected to tell ourselves, is going to be the scariest movie of all time.
And somehow the Green Goblin is involved?
Well, don’t worry, because we’re about to see some of that terrifying footage. First, future Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul co-star Giancarlo Esposito gets killed by an exploding arcade cabinet, and then some guy gets a soda can shot into his testicles by a vending machine.
Uh-oh.
“A lot of people have directed Stephen King novels and stories,” King says, speaking about himself in the third person like that’s ever been a good sign. “And I finally decided if you want something done right you oughta do it yourself.”
Once again, just in case you’ve forgotten, that’s Stephen King throwing massive shade at Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma and John Carpenter, amongst others. He’s not just saying that the film he directed is going to be good, he’s calling some of the greatest horror directors in the history of the cinematic medium incompetent.
Cut to cars driving themselves through a front window of a diner! Cut to Yeardley Smith, the future voice of Lisa on The Simpsons, screaming in terror!
“It was my first picture as a director, and you know something?” King asks the audience, rhetorically, as he works himself up into a manic line reading. “I sort of enjoyed it!”
Oh man, he’s really worked up about directi… wait, “sort of?” He only “sort of” enjoyed it?
“WHAT IS GOING ON,” Yeardley Smith screams! “I DON’T KNOW,” yells her husband!
“I just wanted someone to do Stephen King right,” says Stephen King, who probably didn’t think too hard about that sentence. (Or worse, he thought about it a lot and he came to the conclusion that it didn’t sound weird or creepy, and not in the good way.)
Cut to Emilio Estevez shooting a rocket launcher at an alien truck, and then back to…
“So come and spend some time with me and my friends at the Dixie Boy,” King invites us. “Spend some time in the dark.”
And then, in the piece de resistance, King lifts his finger dramatically to the audience and declares, “I’m going to scare the hell outta you. And that’s a promise.”
“Jesus is comin’ and he is [OFF-SCREEN CAR HORN SOUND EFFECT],” Emilio Estevez announces, after a brief montage of mayhem.
God bless this trailer, this absurd, cocky, unconvincing, condescending trailer that dares to call The Shining, The Dead Zone, Carrie and Christine pieces of crap while trying to sell us on the idea that Maximum Overdrive – one of the most ridiculous (albeit ridiculously entertaining) – Stephen King adaptations is better than all of them.
Imagine if the Doctor Sleep trailer opened with director Mike Flanagan looking directly at the screen, in front of a giant image of Doctor Doom’s face for some reason, and calling Stanley Kubrick a punk for screwing up The Shining, then pointing his finger directly at the camera and daring you to see his new film.
That would be absurd. It would also be the biggest flex ever, and it would also be exactly what Stephen King did (if you exchange Green Goblin for Doctor Doom, of course).
They don’t make trailers like the one for Maximum Overdrive anymore. They didn’t even really make them at the time. It was a colossal marketing power play, a gamble that audiences would flock to anything – even the goofiest Stephen King movie ever – so long as they knew that King himself was in charge. And they were somehow guaranteed to think it was the scariest movie ever, despite oodles of footage in that exact same trailer which pretty much proved otherwise.
Maximum Overdrive is, for the record, a cult classic, and a beloved film amongst many King fans specifically because the author took a big swing, made something bonkers, and never directed again. But to say it lived up to its own hype would be a huge overstatement. And that hype gushes from this trailer in waves.
So enjoy that Doctor Sleep trailer if you must. Just know that if you want something done right, you oughta do it yourself, and put a big ol’ groin attack in your trailer to prove it.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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