by Joel Harley
From 1976’s Carrie onwards, the work of Stephen King has been as prolific on the screen as it is on the page. This documentary takes a look at the King’s contributions to television and film, lovingly curated by director and documentarian Daphné Baiwir.
Dedicated Constant Readers are unlikely to learn anything Earth-shattering here – did you know that King hated Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining? – but the documentary is well-illustrated with relevant clips and behind-the-scenes anecdotes. Frequent collaborators such as Mick Garris, Mike Flanagan, and Frank Darabont add their voices to a chorus of appreciation, alternating between the insightful and the already-knew-that.
Bookended by a corny yet charming fictional sequence in which Baiwir wanders through a land of King’s easter eggs, it’s a sweet appreciation of the author’s work but hardly an exhaustive one. With over 80 film and TV adaptations already out there in the wild, that’s far more than any 105-minute documentary could ever hope to cover – and so King on Screen skips over many of the bad or less remarkable ones in favour of a more rose-tinted approach.
A fairly surface-level exploration of the writer and his work in TV and film, but a pleasant journey regardless.
STEPHEN KING ON SCREEN is out on Blu-ray on September 25th and is on digital platforms now.
