Graveyard Shift

Usually when making a Stephen King movie a top concern is how to incorperate all the elements that made the novel so good. Thus the reason for concern about the upcoming IT movie -- and the reason so many King books are turned into mini series (Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, Desperatin).

.

King's novella's often suffer from the opposite problem: How will movie makers stretch a short novel into a whole movie? Often this is done with great skill -- All of the Different Seasons stories come to mind. HOwever, sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.

.

That brings up Graveyard Shift. I watched this again last night with some enthusiasm. That was not long lived. The tagline was: "Stephen King took you to the edge with The Shining and Pet Sematary. This time......he pushes you over." Well, no! The movie is not at all scary. The characters are not interesting, and unfortuantely the special effects weren't very special.

.

It's tough in a movie when you really don't care who dies and who makes it to the end. At least in the Incredible Hulk, when the drifter gets hired you can expect a cool green monster.

.

The opening scene is rather delightful. After a worker kills a rat, the other rats stare knowingly at him -- watching as mama rat approaches.

.

If Stephen King hadn't written this story, I doubt anyone would have chosen to film this story. The stories power is the imagination -- rats in dark places really is a scary idea that King masterfully drives home.

.

The Duck Speaks actually gave this book a very good review. http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2002/graveyard-shift In fact, they liked it enough that it made me want to go back and see if I was watching the same movie! Zack Handlen writes: "After rereading the short story and rewatching the movie in rapid succession, I can safely say that as an adaptation, this one plays straight pool. The source material is a dark, morbid piece with very little in the way of humanity or light, and the movie, touches of dark comedy aside, is much the same. All of the original plot is there, not only the names- and even more importantly, an attempt is made to capture that wonderful “tone” that everyone always talks about King’s work having. It’s a fairly successful attempt, surprisingly; it only misses in the scares department, and even then, it’s not too painful. "