Review of YOU CAN'T KILL STEPHEN KING

Hey, check  out this great review of the independant film, YOU CAN'T KILL STEPHEN KING, by David Wain.  This is reposted with permission from UK HORROR SCENE -- thanks y'all!

YOU CAN’T KILL STEPHEN KING (2012)
Dir. Ronnie Khalil, Monroe Mann, Jorge Valdes-Iga         92 mins
Anchor Bay
UK Release: 14th October 2013

You Can’t Kill Stephen King! Even the most hardened cynical horror nerds amongst us will give a wry smile at that title. Despite the legendary author not making an appearance, it’s still a perverted humorous ode to the master from Maine.

Our guides are Lamont (Justin Brown), Ronnie (co-director Ronnie Khalil), Nicole (Kayle Blogna), Hilary (Crystal Arnette), Lori (Kate Costello) and Monroe (co-director Monroe Mann). Their mission quite simply is to hunt down the home of one Stephen King, but alas such a simple idea is rarely as easy as it looks. On stopping off at a diner on the way into town, they soon discover that visitors are frowned upon in this small community, and the diner owner (who acts very much like Annie Wilkes) makes no secret of that fact.

They’re told that Stephen King no longer lives in the town, but thinking that this may be a ruse just to keep them moving along, they decide to hang around as they have accommodation booked. First up though, they decide a boat trip is in order as rumour has it the King residence is viewable from the lake (they take a boat called Christine), whilst Lamont drives off in search of gas reminding us he’s “the only black guy in Maine”.

Later that day the group check in to their abode but with Lamont not back they have no choice but to go and look for him. The creepy boat trip guy Verrill (yes, that’s the character King played in Creepshow) points them to the gas station a quarter of a mile north, but when they arrive the sight of blue flashing lights spell disaster. With Lamont dead, it’s not long before others follow the same fate – but curiously they’re all being murdered in a similar fashion to characters from Stephen King novels.
With two characters sharing the surname Bachman, endless references to Misery, The Stand, It and Night Shift as well as a dream sequence that’s an absolute hoot, You Can’t Kill Stephen King makes for fun viewing indeed. With all the King-isms in it though, would that make it a drag for the un-King-nitiated? The answer to that would likely be yes. Critically speaking too, I think it’d be easy to throw some negatives in, and perhaps they would be justified, but sometimes a film simply has to be judged on how much fun you had watching it.

For me as a King obsessive it was a blast with a really funny script, ingenious plot and some fine gore. Sure, many of the King references seem shoehorned in, but many are also very subtle and quite obscure. Coincidentally the filmmakers encountered Stephen while shooting the movie and offered him a cameo. He declined sadly, which is a shame as it might have made this breezy and clever comedy-horror just perfect.
7 out of 10

REPOSTED FROM: www.ukhorrorscene.com