Editorials
The Annie Wilkes Origin Story Reaches a Perfect Conclusion in “Castle Rock” Season Finale
“I’m his number one fan.”
The very concept of “Castle Rock” – a series set within Stephen King’s Universe, though not beholden to directly adapting any of his stories – allows the writers to play with different storylines and characters from King’s work, and on that particular front, the second season was far more compelling than the first. Whereas the show’s debut season casually brushed up against stories including The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption, the second season drew inspiration from Salem’s Lot and plucked its central character out of Misery. And it’s the story of Annie Wilkes that the season ultimately brought to a satisfying conclusion.
Titled “Clean,” the season finale directly tied the show’s version of Annie (played to perfection by Lizzy Caplan) to the Annie from both King’s novel and Rob Reiner’s film, making it clear that this season of “Castle Rock” was very much an origin story for the Annie Wilkes we all know. Oddly enough, that was something of a surprise twist for the season, as the show’s Annie had up to this point been, in a surprise twist unto itself, a sympathetic protagonist.
Through fleshing out the Misery villain’s backstory, the writers of “Castle Rock” have been able to take a much more nuanced approach to the depiction of Annie Wilkes than Constant Readers are familiar with, exploring the mental disorders and tragic life events that ultimately turned a loving mother into a murderous monster. Relayed to us in the 1994-set episode 5 (“The Laughing Place”), Annie’s mental illness was genetically inherited from her mother, who took her own life in an attempt to kill both Annie and herself. As for Annie’s father, he was accidentally killed by Annie all those years ago, and the standout fifth episode also informed us that Joy, who Annie has raised as a daughter, is actually Annie’s half-sister – the daughter Annie’s father had with Annie’s tutor in the wake of Annie’s mother killing herself.
Despite it all – and “it all,” I must remind, includes Annie attempting to kill her tutor after accidentally killing her father, very nearly drowning Joy when she was a baby, and murdering a man with an ice cream scoop – the Annie Wilkes we’ve gotten to know in the second season of “Castle Rock” has been a sympathetic character rather than a stone-cold killer, which has been the season’s single most interesting quality. The latter half of the season has even positioned Annie as something of an unlikely hero, one of the few forces of good helping to save the town of Castle Rock from complete annihilation at the hands of evil forces from the 1600s and a mysterious man who has been influencing the show’s events since season one.
But “Clean,” after wrapping up the season’s main storyline perhaps a little bit too quickly and easily (more on that in a little bit), brilliantly reconciled the young Annie Wilkes of “Castle Rock,” a complex depiction of a mentally-unstable mother trying to hold it together and protect her daughter at all costs, with the more unhinged Annie Wilkes of Misery.
After saving Joy from the supernatural forces threatening the future of Castle Rock, Annie took her “little love” across the border to Canada, in search of the “happy place” they’d been looking for. Annie believed she had found it when she took up a job as the live-in nurse for a bed-ridden man at his lake-front home, but the dream became a nightmare when Annie started to believe that Joy was still in the grips of those evil forces. Her mind warped by her mental illness, Annie ultimately ended up drowning her beloved daughter in the aforementioned lake, fulfilling the tragic and seemingly inescapable fate that her own mother had passed down to her. It was as if Annie was only ever out-running that inevitable horror.
Upon realizing that her mind had betrayed her, and that Joy was very much still Joy when she killed her, Annie finally lost touch with reality completely, imagining an alternate reality wherein Joy didn’t die and they went on to live a happy life together. The final scene of the episode saw Annie (and Joy by her side, if only in Annie’s mind) attending a book signing for her new favorite author, whose work she has only recently discovered: Paul Sheldon.
The episode left us with Annie sitting front row at the signing, totally alone but believing her daughter is sitting next to her. “I’m his number one fan,” Annie says to herself. Of course, we know where the story goes from there. Now that she has killed the one thing that was keeping her from falling over the edge, so to speak, Annie Wilkes has truly become Annie Wilkes. And Paul Sheldon has no idea what’s coming to him in the very near future.
Above all else, the second season of “Castle Rock” has been an Annie Wilkes prequel story, introducing us to the iconic character at three early stages of her life and providing us with more of a window into her mind than we ever really had before. As a child, her dyslexia made her an outcast at school, leading her parents to make the decision to home-school her. As a teenager, Annie’s life was rocked by multiple tragedies, including her father leaving and her mother trying to kill her, not to mention the death of her father by her own hand. And as an adult, much closer to the events of Misery, she took the life of the only person left in the world that she truly loved. But not before discovering a new purpose in life, and a new person to devote all of her attention to. That being Paul Sheldon, whose words come along at just the wrong time to make an impression and capture her heart like only Joy did before.
It’s up to the individual Stephen King fan to decide whether or not any of this is canon to King’s work, but if you let them, the ten episodes of this season of “Castle Rock” admirably serve to enrich the experience of revisiting Misery – either book or movie. Thanks to strong writing – Annie’s dad being a writer who referred to her as his “number one fan” while she was growing up was a real nice touch, as was Annie being distraught over his finished novel not being dedicated to her – and Lizzy Caplan’s Emmy-worthy performance, it’s not at all hard to imagine this Annie Wilkes becoming the Annie Wilkes played by Kathy Bates in 1990, and that’s a testament to how much of a treat “Castle Rock” can be to King fans if it continues down the path of more directly drawing inspiration from his most iconic works.
On the flip side, what wasn’t all the satisfying about the season two finale was the way the overarching storyline was wrapped up, with our heroes saving the day and blowing up the Marsten house within the first 20 minutes of the episode. The season had overall struggled with weaving together all the different storylines at play, and while last week’s “Caveat Emptor” brought everything together quite perfectly, this week’s finale felt like it was in a rush to move past the plight of Castle Rock and get into the Misery prequel its back half was dedicated to. We still don’t really know who Bill Skarsgård’s character is and none of the characters really got much of a sendoff aside from Tim Robbins’ Pop (who was able to heroically sacrifice himself for a second time thanks to a silly plot convenience that was probably put to use one too many times by the show), making it feel like the season really needed two episodes to wrap everything up but unfortunately only had one at its disposal.
That being said, the second season of “Castle Rock” was considerably more satisfying on the whole than the first, and the handling of Annie Wilkes’ storyline, in particular, brought the show to heights that it was never quite able to reach in season one. It’s as if the creators have cracked the code and figured out what kinds of stories the show ought to be telling, and that makes the future possibilities both endless and incredibly exciting for the King fans watching.
Here’s hoping enough fans did watch this season to warrant another renewal from Hulu, as there are countless other iconic King characters deserving of this small screen spotlight.
A new breed of creature-features was unleashed in the 1990s and continued well into the next decade. Shaking off the ecological messaging of the past, these monsters existed for the sake of pure mayhem. Just to name a few: Tremors, The Relic, Anaconda, Godzilla, Deep Rising and Lake Placid all showcased this trend of irreverent creature chaos. Reptiles and other scaly beasts proved to be a popular source of inspiration for these films, but for that extra crawly experience, bugs were the best and quickest route. Spiders, in particular, led some of the worst infestations on screen in the early 2000s. And on the underbelly of this creeping new wave — specifically the direct-to-video sector — hangs an overlooked offering of spider horror: Arachnid.
In 2000, Brian Yuzna and Julio Fernández launched the Spanish production company Fantastic Factory. The Filmax banner’s objective was to create modestly budgeted genre films for international distribution. And while they achieved their goal — a total of nine English-language films were produced and shipped all across the globe — Fantastic Factory ultimately closed up shop after only five years. Arachnid, directed by Jack Sholder (Alone in the Dark, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, The Hidden) and based on a script by Mark Sevi, was the second project from the short-lived genre house. Yuzna was drawn to the concept largely because of its universal appeal; a monster was marketable in any region, regardless of cultural preferences or restrictions. There was also the fact that spiders give everyone a case of the heebie-jeebies.
By having extraterrestrial forces be the cause of the spiders’ mutism and immensity as well as other urgent problems within the story, Arachnid incidentally pays respect to Hollywood’s golden age of schlock filmmaking. The opening sequence indeed shows a stealth plane’s pilot (Jesús Cabrero) trailing a UFO and its translucent passenger to an island in the South Pacific, but the alien business is kept to a minimum going forward. There is no time to process this seismic revelation of life beyond Earth before moving on to the film’s central plot.
Pictured: Alex Reid, Chris Potter and Neus Asensi’s characters get trapped in the spider’s web in Arachnid.
Several months since the E.T. was last sighted — and after being snuffed out by one of its own accidental creations — a medical team from Guam heads to Celebes (better known as Sulawesi nowadays), in search of whatever is behind a new illness. The doctors (played by José Sancho and Neus Asensi) already suspected a spider bite, although they failed to consider the biter could be the size of a tank. With The Descent’s Alex Reid as the snarky pilot of this doomed expedition, one who has ulterior motives for accepting the job, the film’s core characters go off in search of a spider and, hopefully, a cure.
The title makes it seem as if there is only the one arachnid in the story, but once Chris Potter and Reid’s characters plus their team step foot on the island, they encounter other altered arthropods. Yuzna felt Sevi’s script needed more creatures along the way, especially before the spider showed up in full view. The bug horror commences as one gunsman succumbs to a burrowing breed of crab-sized ticks, and random characters fend off a horrific centipede with reptilian qualities. These are just the appetizers before the greatest arachnid of them all arrives. The late Ravil Isyanov, here playing a zealous but sympathetic arachnologist, becomes a human Lunchable for the spider’s eggs. And one of the doctors gets a face full of corrosive spider spew. So, there is no shortage of grisly predation in the film, with a few bits of the monsters’ handiwork possessing a haunting quality to them.
Shot quickly and cheaply, Arachnid is fast-food horror. It’s convenient and designed for immediate consumption, and will likely not linger on the palate. Usually there is not a lot worth remembering with these slapdash genre productions, however, this is one case of spider horror where the extra effort made a difference. Apart from the egregious use of digital imagery in the outset, Jack Sholder’s film primarily employs practical effects. And these are not rubber spiders dangling from strings or being flung at the actors, either. Fantastic Factory aimed much higher by securing DDTSFX (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy II: The Golden Army) and creature designer and makeup artist Steve Johnson (Species, Blade II).
Pictured: One of the spider’s web-covered victims in Arachnid.
Arachnid, while far from flawless, somewhat redeems itself by having chosen practical effects and animatronics over CGI, which had become the new normal in these kinds of films. And this class of creature-feature was definitely not getting the sort of advanced VFX found in the likes of Eight Legged Freaks. Steve Johnson’s spider was not the easiest prop to work with, and it lacks the movement and versatility of a digital depiction. However, there is no beating that sense of weight and occupation of space that makes a tangible monster more intimidating. Viewers will have trouble recalling the human characters long after watching Arachnid, yet the humongous headliner remains the stuff of nightmares.
Over the years, the director has spoken critically of the film. He originally held off on agreeing to the offer to direct in hopes that another project, a Steven Seagal picture, would finally manifest. No such luck, and Sholder accepted Arachnid only on account of his needing the work. He said of the film: “I thought I could […] make it halfway decent, but I discovered there wasn’t a whole lot I could do.” Nevertheless, Sholder’s experience as a director of not exactly high-brow yet still rather entertaining horror is evident in what he has since called a “dud.” While there is no denying the reality and outcome of Arachnid, even the most mediocre films have their strokes of brilliance, small as they may be.
Pictured: The poster for Arachnid.
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