“Everything burns.”
Adapting Stephen King is like a land grab in the gold rush days: everything is available, and everybody wants it all. Ever since Brian de Palma’s Carrie, King movies have been a staple not just of the horror movie season (summer), but year round. And people will adapt anything. Can’t get the rights to a big story? No problem, you can always make The Mangler (about a laundry folding machine) or The Lawnmower Man (I have no idea). This is never going to stop; hell, King himself directed Maximum Overdrive, based on his story “Trucks,” and then in 1997 the damn thing was made again, but this time it was called Trucks. So for every big-name adaptation like Christine, It, or The Shining, you’re going to get things like Dolan’s Cadillac, A Good Marriage, or Sometimes They Come Back.
I remember watching Sometimes They Come Back when I was in middle school and first getting really into Stephen King’s work. I didn’t remember much of it beyond “undead greasers,” which, yes, is a big part of the film. But to be honest, I expected it to be pretty bad (TV movie and all that). Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great, but it’s better than I remembered. Stephen King excels at writing about youth and trauma, and this is a better representation of both than you might think.
Jim Norman is returning to his hometown after 27 years, having been run out of his teaching job in Chicago after an outburst. If this makes him sound like a Jack Torrance retread, well, it kind of is. Jim has never returned since his parents whisked him away at age 9, following the death of his older brother, Wayne. The house he grew up in has remained vacant this whole time, now boarded up and decrepit, looking like a festering wound.
For a movie that’s basically been forgotten (ironic, seeing as it spawned two sequels, one of which starred Hilary Swank), there is some nice imagery and clever filmmaking on display here. There’s a particularly clever sequence when Jim begins either dreaming or hallucinating, and the transition between present and past is nicely fluid. This doesn’t make up for the acting, though, much of which leaves something to be desired. Tim Matheson is fine as Jim, and has nice chemistry with Brooke Adams (playing Jim’s wife, Sally), but beyond that the performance is nothing special, owing to the role being nothing special.
But there’s a nice undercurrent of rage and sorrow throughout the film. One of King’s go-to antagonists is the psychopathic bully (It, Christine), and that shows up here as well. Jim and Wayne are accosted by four greasers who demand payment in order to use a tunnel. There’s no motive to anything they’re doing, it’s just evil. Granted, this means they’re not as fleshed out as It‘s Henry Bowers or Christine‘s Buddy Repperton, but this movie was based on a short story, not a novel, so that’s to be expected. But Matheson does a nice job playing the fear and confusion running through Jim when the long-dead greasers start showing up in his class, killing some of his students. Childhood trauma never really goes away, does it? We just pretend it loses its power with age. The thing about repressed griefs and memories is that – forgive me – sometimes they come back.
Look, Sometimes They Come Back is not essential viewing (unless you’re going through everything based on King’s work, in which case, enjoy David Arquette’s cringe-inducing attempt at playing a bad guy in Riding the Bullet). I mainly watched it to see how it stood up. Even as a kid, I didn’t find this film particularly scary (although there’s a nicely gruesome scene in which you see the greasers’ true rotted faces). But what I missed as a kid was the film’s heart, which is surprisingly big considering this is a TV movie based off of one of King’s pulpiest stories (from 1977’s Night Shift, if you’re curious; the story was first published in a magazine called Cavalier). Adaptations of King are largely hit and miss, but Sometimes They Come Back, for its faults, retains the beating heart at its center.
Thursday, 10/1: Phantasm
Friday, 10/2: Frozen
Saturday, 10/3: Suspiria
Sunday, 10/4: Suspiria (2018)
Monday, 10/5: Emelie
Tuesday, 10/6: Castle Freak
Wednesday, 10/7: Session 9
Thursday, 10/8: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
Friday, 10/9: We Are Still Here
Saturday, 10/10: The Changeling
Sunday, 10/11: The Bad Seed
Monday, 10/12: Verotika
Tuesday, 10/13: The Legend of Hell House
Wednesday, 10/14: Lake Mungo
Thursday, 10/15: Puppetmaster
Friday, 10/16: Marrowbone
Saturday, 10/17: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Sunday, 10/18: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Monday, 10/19: Sweetheart
Tuesday, 10/20: Girl On the Third Floor
Wednesday, 10/21: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Thursday, 10/22: Triangle
Friday, 10/23: Dog Soldiers
Saturday, 10/24: Noroi: The Curse
Sunday, 10/25: Train to Busan
Monday, 10/26: Tales From the Hood
Tuesday, 10/27: Mandy
Wednesday, 10/28: Sometimes They Come Back
Thursday, 10/29: Veronica
Friday, 10/30: The Wicker Man
Saturday, 10/31: Child’s Play
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