Desperation: Best TV Movie I've Ever Seen

So here goes again with another exciting post that no one will ever read. Last night I was lucky enough to see Stephen King's Desperation on the SciFi channel. I just got done listening to the audiobook so the story and characters were still fresh in my mind when I was watching it. I figured this would put the movie at a serious disadvantage considering movies rarely live up to the book's, but I think Desperation did a pretty good job both of casting a realistic portrayal of the characters in the book and of sticking relatively close to the story in the book.

Desperation is a pretty excellent story with a creepy plot that really just gets more and more creepy as it goes on. The story centers around a group of 8 protagonists and 1 antagonist (in the beginning anyway). We begin with a couple from New York who are driving across the country to return the husband's sister's car. Driving through Nevada, they are pulled over and arrested by a rather odd cop from the old mining town of Desperation. By rather odd, I mean including the phrase, "I'm going to kill you," in the Miranda rights.

After having dealt with the first couple (killing the husband who was Elliott in E.T. and introducing us to all but three of the rest of the characters in the film) the cop goes back hunting for more victims. So now in the prison there is a family of 3 (that used to be 4), an old veterenarian (the last living person from Desperation), and Elliott's wife.

We meet the truck driver and the hitchhiker he picked up and we follow their sideplot for a bit. Then finally the driver's boss comes into the scene-- a midlife crisis writer on a Harley taking a leak in the desert. After a good solid thrashing from the cop he is taken back to the police station and locked up with the others. From there the real story begins to unfold-- why the police officer who had worked there for 13 years suddenly went ape-shit and killed everyone in the town--why all the desert animals seem to be at his control-- what exactly went on in the "China Pit" mine, and what was awakened...

The movie itself is pretty well done for having been done as a TV movie. The casting, as I have already said, was excellent. The cop, played by Ron Perlman, was exactly as described in the book. The deviance from the book was actually quite minimal. One fairly superfluous character was not included in the film, which didn't really bother me. She didn't exactly add anything to the plot that could not be added by someone else. Also, the scene where the old-timer with the bike had a flashback/nightmare sequence about when he was in Vietnam was probably even better done than I remember from the book.

I certainly liked this movie more than most, and I think that it is just another example of Stephen King's books making excellent movies (Pet Semetary still scares me to this day). I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a good solid horror flick.

Best Death: Being blown up and then having a huge mine collapse from above.
Kill Rate: 55% (Not including the entire town that got wiped out and the China Pit Massacre scene)
"Skills of Kills": ****
Gore: ***
Creepiness: ***
Plot: ****
Overall: ****