Halloween Films: Part 3 (4 of 7). Henry makes a new kind of fertilizer with Stephen King's 1922 (Netflix Original). Get the full show now @ FilmBuds.Bandcamp.com!
[00:00:02] Let's get to 1922 from 2017 and it's a Netflix original based off the Stephen King novella.
[00:00:13] It's written and directed by Zach Hilditch, stars Thomas Jane, Molly Parker, Dylan Schmidt.
[00:00:23] And the synopsis is, a simple yet proud farmer in the year 1922 conspires to murder his wife for financial gain, convincing his teenage son to assist.
[00:00:35] But their actions have unintended consequences.
[00:00:40] So this was a first time watch for me, had been meaning to get around to it for a while.
[00:00:47] I've been kind of slacking on the more recent Stephen King adaptations that have been done through Netflix like this one.
[00:00:56] Which I really appreciate Netflix for because, yeah, other Stephen King movies like it, Doctor Sleep, etc.
[00:01:05] Those are generally going to be the bigger box office successes, as opposed to a more minor work like this that if it was released in theaters,
[00:01:16] it probably would not do that well financially, would be swept under the rug.
[00:01:22] And in this case, as with In the Tall Grass, Gerald's Game, etc., Netflix gives them a bigger audience and they're easier to access.
[00:01:36] And overall, I thought it was solid.
[00:01:39] I don't think it's ever going to be a favorite Stephen King film for me.
[00:01:44] But from what I understand, it was a very faithful adaptation for the most part.
[00:01:49] And it was in some ways refreshingly simple and down to earth.
[00:01:55] There are a few supernatural things to it, but it's very small scale, almost entirely in one location, sometimes felt like a stage play in a good way.
[00:02:09] There's not really any jump scares.
[00:02:12] It's almost entirely reliant on the mood and the storyline to create that sense of dread.
[00:02:20] It's easily one of the most grim Stephen King adaptations I've seen in quite a while.
[00:02:29] There's little to no humor.
[00:02:32] It's a lot of brooding because, as the synopsis says, it centers around this farmer who wants to kill his wife to get her money and to keep this land that she owns in her family.
[00:02:47] So he convinces his teenage son to help him with.
[00:02:52] They do it early on in the movie and the rest of the film is more so the father unraveling, his whole life unraveling mentally, physically.
[00:03:05] It's really a classic story of committing an evil action, not only in a criminal way, you know, murder, but also living a life of lies and deceit and dark secrets.
[00:03:19] Not owning up to what you've done and that completely infecting every part of your life.
[00:03:28] That idea by itself is definitely something that most people have seen before.
[00:03:33] It's a good story to remind people of.
[00:03:37] But there aren't really any surprises when it comes to the narrative.
[00:03:42] It is though, and it's easy to overlook this or to underappreciate this, the direction is really strong.
[00:03:51] It's hard to make a movie that, for one thing, as a period piece that's set out in the country, a couple of characters, all of which are not likable and to make it consistently engaging.
[00:04:04] The performance by Thomas Jane, amazing.
[00:04:10] The camera is almost always intimately up in his face.
[00:04:15] So you're seeing that really crazy arc of a rise and fall of thinking, oh, I have it all figured out.
[00:04:23] I'm good to go being on top of the world.
[00:04:25] But then suddenly, everything crumbling, the frustration, the anger, the paranoia, it's all there in that performance.
[00:04:37] And the movie really relies on him.
[00:04:41] So if he wasn't as good as he is, the movie could easily have completely fallen through.
[00:04:49] Murder of the wife in the first act is very effective, very chilling and disturbing, even with the son saying goodbye, mama, and then putting the bag over her face and butchering the whole thing, so to speak.
[00:05:05] There's also a lot of rat imagery in this, all of which is, I'd say, effective, maybe at times a little overused.
[00:05:14] But it's nevertheless very unsettling, stomach churning to constantly see rats crawling over everything in his life, with one of the best images being when they put the mother's body in the well to hide her.
[00:05:30] And Thomas Jane looks in, and there's a rat tail wagging in the wife's mouth, and then the rat crawls out backwards out of it.
[00:05:42] Or the scene when all the cows are mooing really loudly in the barn, he goes to look, and the rats are chewing off the cow's udders.
[00:05:53] The movie looks great as well. The look of the farmhouse, the fields, the lighting is great, a very natural color palette, much better than you would expect for a Netflix movie.
[00:06:05] The score is excellent. And in a movie like this, you do need a good score to help that momentum and keep that atmosphere going.
[00:06:17] I thought the storyline with the, and spoilers here, with the son and his wife who he runs away with because she's pregnant.
[00:06:31] I mean, there's nothing crazy new in it, but I thought it was interesting to show how that action by the father and by the son too seeps into his life when he becomes a robber.
[00:06:44] They become almost like a Bonnie and Clyde sort of couple for a minute, but then things go terribly wrong very quickly.
[00:06:53] She dies, then he kills himself, so then the father is left now without a son either to pass on his property,
[00:07:01] which is one of his hopes for the future that his land will be carried on through his family.
[00:07:08] All of his farm animals die, his house literally starts crumbling.
[00:07:17] And then on top of all that, what I felt spoke the most true in terms of someone keeping all that inside is when towards the end,
[00:07:28] he's trying to move on and get a job somewhere else after he's left the farm because it's cursed, essentially.
[00:07:38] He can't even work properly at another job because no matter what he's doing, he always sees reminders of it in his head.
[00:07:48] And what feels very Stephen King and feels very true to the character in a good way,
[00:07:53] even though you wish he would admit to what he's done and things would all be okay in a way.
[00:08:00] When he gets his hand amputated because of the rat bite, which is gross, but good.
[00:08:07] The scene when he's in the hospital and the sheriff comes and says,
[00:08:12] hey, we found a woman by the side of the road with this description.
[00:08:18] Could this have been her?
[00:08:21] And he never really says yes or no, but just remains silent and makes his case even worse.
[00:08:29] The ending, I know from what I read, maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is correct.
[00:08:34] The final moment of the book was changed for the movie.
[00:08:39] And in the movie, it's him in an apartment or a hotel room or something.
[00:08:46] The undead decomposing corpses, ghosts, whatever, of the wife, the son, and the daughter-in-law are all there with knives waiting to kill him, basically.
[00:09:02] I like that overall.
[00:09:03] I don't know how other people feel, but I think no matter the ending in the novella,
[00:09:09] and maybe going a little too far in terms of the supernatural angle that we hadn't really seen that much of in the rest of the movie,
[00:09:17] I still felt like that was a satisfying end to that character.
[00:09:21] Some other scenes, the very clever, if we're being real, of when they have dumped the wife's body in the well,
[00:09:32] and they're trying to figure out, okay, what if someone looks in there?
[00:09:36] What if someone asks about it?
[00:09:39] So they put the cow or one of their cows on top of the well, wait till it falls through and breaks its legs,
[00:09:47] and then shoots it, so then that way they can say, oh, we're filling up this well because our cow accidentally fell in,
[00:09:56] contaminated it, so it serves no purpose.
[00:09:59] That's why the dirt is so fresh.
[00:10:05] So you've got to be in the right mood for it, considering how dour it all is,
[00:10:10] but it's worth a watch and is very satisfying, at least I thought it was.
[00:10:17] That one is a heavy three and a half out of five.