1922 review: Stephen King horror novella’s Netflix adaptation suffers from tedious pace

Shots of sprawling corn fields are one of the redeeming features of 1922.

‘1922’, a novella, was published in the collection ‘Full Dark, No Stars’ and was an okay story with little novelty, I thought at the time; a typical psychological horror saga of a crazy, murderous husband that Stephen King has done numerous times. Only this time the murderer was perfectly sane when he did the deed. It was only after the murder that he lost his wits.

The year is 1922. Thomas Jane (who also starred in ‘The Mist’, one of the better Stephen King adaptations) plays a rancher called Wilfred James who lives with his wife and teenaged son in a Nebraskan farm far from the hustle and bustle of the city. He is in love with the quiet life of the countryside. His wife, Arlette, on the other hand, would like the family to go urban. And therein lies the conflict. According to Wilfred, “Cities are for fools.” He conspires with his son Henry to murder Arlette. The motive is not at all convincing. Surely the murder of a wife just because the husband wants to keep his farmland too extreme? And can a son be convinced to help kill his mother even if it is his father asking him to? In the dark and twisted world of Stephen King, probably yes.

Wilfred tries religious fear-mongering on Henry but it is the thought of losing his young girlfriend that persuades Henry – the idea of leaving her when his mother takes him to the city scares him. The deciding factor comes when a drunk Arlette makes some unfortunate comments about his lady-love. The murder is botched and the father-son duo disposes of the body by dumping it into an unused well. The dead in Stephen King’s world, as we have learned, scarcely keep quiet. They almost invariably come back. Arlette returns too, and along with her, come dozens of rats. Which reminds me – if you don’t like rats, I advise you not to watch this movie. There are some scenes that disturbed even yours truly who thought rats were cute.

Don’t like rats? Don’t watch this movie. That simple.

1922 is shot well. The vast corn fields in a landscape washed out of colour never fail to make an impression. Some of the shots are extended to better convey what is going on beneath the surface. The scenes involving rats are really better not seen while you are eating. There is one scene in which a rat has burrowed into the mouth of a corpse. Acting is good. Thomas Jane as the misogynistic, cantankerous redneck is pretty convincing and he is what keeps the movie afloat. What is not as convincing is the Southern drawl that comes out of Thomas Jane’s mouth. It sounds almost as bogus as British actor Andrew Lincoln’s attempts to get the Deep South accent in AMC’s zombie drama The Walking Dead right. But once you go past this, you cannot in good conscience fault him for his performance. His face hides more than it reveals. Other actors have thinly written characters to work with and do well enough.

Overall, ‘1922’ is a decent enough watch for horror fans. But it does not come anywhere near the élan and polish of ‘Gerald’s Game’. The themes of the film – guilt and ‘every murderer gets his comeuppance’ (epitomised by Wiflred himself in the line “In the end, we all get caught”) – are as old as time. It unsettles more than it scares and seeks to be a slow-burner, which is refreshing but it is marred by the tedious pace. ‘1922’ is also too character-driven for its own good. There is little plot to follow, and whatever there is, it is stretched too thin over its long run time. The problem, for the most part, lies with the source material.

Stephen King has written a lot of good stuff, but he has written some bad stuff too. It takes great vision to turn a bad piece of literature to a decent adaptation, which is sorely lacking here. Moreover, 1922 is a novella, and it does not have enough juice to make a nicely-paced feature-length movie. A smart editor would easily have shaved off 40-odd minutes from the movie making it a little over an hour long, which would have been just about right to tell this story well.