From the opening scenes, lifted wholesale from 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day, director Tim Miller’s TERMINATOR: DARK FATE wants you to remember the franchise’s past. Well, specific parts of it at least.
Ignoring the sequels created between 2003 and 2015, screenwriters David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes, and Billy Ray – working from a story co-credited to series progenitor James Cameron – literally blasts the past in the opening sequences and rewrite the franchise history. It’s now 2020 and Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a cybernetically enhanced human from the future, arrives to protect Daniella “Dani” Ramos (Natalia Reyes) from a newly arrived Rev-9 model terminator (Diego Luna).
It’s barely a compliment to say that this is easily the best sequel since T2, as the quality has rapidly declined across the three alternative timeline sequels. The action sequences are about as generic as they come, but they are relentless and comfortably familiar, which is a credo that could easily apply to the whole film. In terms of pure spectacle, there’s several set-pieces – including a highway sequence that reintroduces Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) – that should get the adrenal glands working in all but the most jaded viewers.
Yet it all still feels like a missed opportunity. The events of the opening sequence conclusive hit the reset button on the franchise, giving Miller and his crew a chance to take the film’s own advice and make its own fate. Instead they play it safe with a soft relaunch and what is ostensibly a remake of T2, right down to the “liquid metal” meanie. SkyNet may have been stopped, but the future feels like history repeating.
Even so, it’s great to see two-thirds of the original cast back together again, with Hamilton ultimately reuniting with Arnold Schwarzenegger for the final showdown. Playing a character known simply as Carl, it’s a strange and fun new direction for the ageing actor. You’ve never heard a T-800 discussing drapery before, have you? In fact, there should be a whole Twin Peaks style spin-off dedicated to this version of Arnie’s famous role.
In the end it’s a fun ride that plays with the current political environment, but one that feels entirely inconsequential as soon as you’ve stepped out of the cinema. It’s the third chapter in a story that never needed a sequel, even if the action-loving world is forever grateful for having T2 in our lives. While it sets us up for more films, this is as good a way as any to bring some closure to at least two characters, and it might be best to let sleeping cyborgs lie.
2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Tim Miller | WRITERS: David Goyer, Justin Rhodes, Billy Ray| CAST: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, Diego Boneta | DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 128 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 30 October 2019 (AUS)
The thing about PROMARE (プロメア) is that just when you think that it can’t get any crazier, the film bursts through the next thin boundary of common sense and stamps that line into oblivion. In other words, it just might be a Studio Trigger masterpiece.
Describing the plot to a film like this is like trying to catalogue each element of a Jackson Pollock painting, but here goes nothing. It’s been thirty years since the appearance of the Burnish, a group of flame-wielding mutants, destroyed half the world. When an extremist group called Mad Burnish emerges, Galo Thymos – a new recruit in the firefighting Burning Rescue brigade – goes up against Mad Burnish leader Lio Fotia. Yet he may not be the real villain.
From the opening credits, blending a kind of animated ‘documentary’ footage with the Benday dots of retro cartooning, PROMARE visually signals that it is going to be something different. In fact, it would be folly to try and follow this as if it were a traditional narrative, as director Hiroyuki Imaishi and writer Kazuki Nakashima have managed to tap into the collective unconscious of anime fans and given us a continuous train of thought of almost two hours.
Yet for the all of the seemingly chaotic shopfront, Imaishi and Nakashima exhibit a very savvy awareness of the conventions of modern anime. So much so that they use all of them: the tropes, inside jokes, visual parodies, genre transitions (from mecha to mock yaoi in a heatbeat), insane cutaways, and literal deus ex machinas. It’s almost as if they compressed several seasons of a show into a single film or wanted to make every anime at once. Either way it works.
The animation is unquestionably mind-blowing. While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea – pastel explosions, CG buildings, rectangular lens flare, and triangular ash – you never forget that you are watching something different. There’s one breakout sequence where the screen fills with a series of massive Burning constructs, each of them seeming to devour the last. At other times, seemingly random inserts will appear as a means of transitions between scenes. This film cares not for your rules.
In PROMARE we have a strange hybrid that is not only a tip of the hat to all the things the filmmakers love, but a weird tribute to itself as well. Fans of Gurren Lagann and Kill La Kill will recognise all the hallmarks of those shows (albeit turned up to 11), while everybody else can happily walk into this without any warning. The looks on their unsuspecting faces will be worth the price of admission.
There is an enthusiasm around the Final Fantasy video game series that is difficult to fathom outside the world of gamers. Given that it has been running since 1987, BRAVE FATHER ONLINE: OUR STORY OF FINAL FANTASY XIV (劇場版 ファイナルファンタジーXIV 光のお父さん) attempts to capture the intergenerational meaning of the game to families with a little bit of clever marketing in the mix too.
Based on a true story, BRAVE FATHER ONLINE adapts the 2017 mini-series Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light. Akio (Kentaro Sakaguchi) has struggled with his emotionally distant father Akira (Kotaro Yoshida) since he was a boy. In fact, he finds dealing with other humans through their Final Fantasy avatars much easier. When Akira unexpectedly retires, Akio secretly bonds with him online via the game.
BRAVE FATHER ONLINE is a film quite literally made in two parts, indicated by dual-credited directors Teruo Noguchi and Kiyoshi Yamamoto. While the former deals with the live action segments of the film, the latter creates a kind of movie-within-a-movie using the game engine. Rather than simply being one of those machinima type productions, screenwriter Kota Fukihara often uses the motif to have group therapy sessions that might feel stilted in a real life setting.
The blend of the two worlds is far more effective than one might assume, and the MMO aspect of the game universe allows for several plot threads to integrate over time and distance. Much of this is due to the formidable presence of the Kotaro Yoshida (The Third Murder), who swings between taciturn and disarmingly tender, such as a scene where he visits a stand-up session to reluctantly support his daughter’s fiancé.
If it all feels like a bit of a blatant grab for your hearts and wallets, it’s probably because it is. That doesn’t mean that it’s any less endearing, with several crises and sweet moments carefully timed to remind us of the importance of family and community. If that community happens to come together via Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, then it seems that your life will be all the richer for it.
While it may feel like an extended advertorial for the titular game at times, this is more about finding connections. A charming film that leans heavily into sentiment, and the machinima technique of using the game engine to create dramatic scenes, it all comes together in a sweet (albeit predictable) ending. At least until the next Final Fantasy XVI is released and tears the family apart.
2019 | Japan | DIR: Teruo Noguchi and Kiyoshi Yamamoto | WRITERS: Kota Fukihara | CAST: Kentaro Sakaguchi, Kotaro Yoshida | DISTRIBUTOR: Gaga Corporation (JPN), Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)
Every now and then a film comes along that just makes you smile. Sometimes it’s a film that speaks to the heart of your human condition. At other times, it’s because it’s gently charming. READY OR NOT is neither of those things, but damn if I didn’t have a grin on my face for most of this throwback splatterfest.
After opening on a violent parlour game in a stately manor, we jump forward 30 years to the pending nuptials of Grace (Samara Weaving) to Daniel Le Domas (Adam Brody), one of the presumptive heirs to the Le Domas gaming dominion. Given a snobbish reception, she soon discovers that it’s tradition to play a random game at midnight to welcome her into the family. Drawing a card labelled “hide and seek,” all hell breaks loose when the bloody reality of the rules becomes apparent.
While it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’ve seen this all before, READY OR NOT delights in shocking us with a series of gory demises once the dangerous game begins. There’s a running gag of maidservants being dispatched perfunctorily, and the repetition doesn’t make it any less funny. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett find normalcy in the incredulity of the situation, making this a grand bit of gore in the tradition of Evil Dead.
If The Babysitter and Mayhem weren’t proof enough, Samara Weaving was made for this kind of star vehicle. From panicked to kick-ass to being totally over the family’s shit, it’s a perfect vessel to show off her comedy chops and emotional range. Of course, the ghoulishly great family around her sells the historic horror, especially the gleefully grim Nicky Guadagni, who looks set to murder us all with her piercing gazes.
You may walk out of the cinema with the same expression as the lead characters: shellshocked, wearied, and covered in crimson goo. Yet it’s hard to imagine that you haven’t had a ball along the way, inadvertently cheering on every deadly dispatch while wondering how the stakes will next be raised. So kick off your wedding hells, replace them with some comfortable footwear, and settle in for the ride. READY OR NOT has all the hallmarks of a cult classic in the making.
2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett | WRITERS: Guy Busick, R. Christopher Murphy| CAST: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Mark O’Brien, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell | DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 25 October 2019 (AUS)
In just under a decade, the already prolific filmmaker Rikiya Imaizumi has made a mark on the Japanese scene. This year alone, his adaptations of Just Only Love and LITTLE NIGHTS, LITTLE LOVE (アイネクライネナハトムジーク) have been doing the rounds on the local cinema and festival circuits, winning a few hearts along the way.
Based on the book by Kotaro Isaka, the story is a lot more low-key than his cult favourite Fish Story or the suspense thriller Golden Slumber. Drawing from various short stories in Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the primary narrative centres on market researcher Sato (Haruma Miura). Waiting for a big romantic moment to bring a perfect match into his life, one day he spots the word “shampoo” written on the hand of a survey participant and wonders if that is a fateful sign.
Parallel to Sato’s story is that of hairdresser Minako (Shihori Kanjiya), who laments a similar lack of opportunities. At the urging of a colleague, she spends time talking to the brother of a client, and as they begin to get close she discovers that he is Manabu Ono (Sekigahara’s Eiki Narita), the first Japanese contender for a boxing championship.
The latter becomes one of the recurring motifs of the film, and emblematic of the importance people place on external rituals and events to their own happiness. Several characters resolve to make decisions based on the outcome of Manabu’s matches, for example. Sato’s colleague Fujima (Taizo Harada), who is surprised to find that his wife has just packed up and left, tries to use the wave of national good will towards the boxer to reforge a relationship with his daughter.
Yet director Rikiya Imaizumi is content to explore each of these characters through little vignettes. Some, like the rallying support of a deaf high school kid, shows the various character’s lives intersecting at various points. In this way, it functions as a minor hyperlinked narrative, but only to to demonstrate the commonality amongst the experiences. Singer-songwriter Kazuyoshi Saito’s catchy “Chiisana Yoru” (“Little Nights”), performed on screen by Taichi Kodama as a busker credited as Saito-san, serves as a linking mechanism.
Central performances are key, and delightful turns from Mikako Tabe, Haruma Miura and Erika Mori support the light dramatic touch. Without giving anything away, there is a time jump at one point in the film, and it is interesting to see how each of the actors evolves their character in this time.
The ultimate message around expectation versus reality, and playing the cards that you are dealt, is a refreshing one in a film that is charmingly relatable on many levels. Or as one character aptly puts it, “Don’t diss the cogs.” In fact, the only life challenge this film should leave you with is trying to get that theme song out of your head.
2019 | Japan | DIR: Rikiya Imaizumi | WRITERS: Kenichi Suzuki (based on the short story collection by Kotaro Isaka) | CAST: Haruma Miura, Mikako Tabe, Taizo Harada, Eiki Narita | DISTRIBUTOR: Gaga Corporation (JPN), Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)
If the popular culture of Japan is any indication, attending a high school is a potential minefield of possibilities. If you aren’t fighting off alien hordes, getting overly enthusiastic about a club or falling in love, then there’s straight-up bullying to deal with.
In KAKEGURUI (映画 賭ケグルイ), based on the manga by Homura Kawamoto and Tōru Naomura, going to school is a literal gamble. The prestigious Hyakkaou Private Academy ranks its students by their gambling winnings, and high stakes games even determine their entire life outcomes. School Council President, Kirari Momobami (Elaiza Ikeda) is the Queen Bee of the school, and the only way to restore one’s good graces is by beating her at her own games.
When the deceptively sweet transfer student Yumeko Jabami (Minami Hamabe) arrives, she becomes the first step in a major shake-up of the establishment. Meanwhile, group calling themselves The Village, dressed all in white and led by the charismatic Murasame (Hio Miyazawa), believes that gambling is meaningless and seek to end its practice at Hyakkaou.
Spinning off from the TV series of the same name, my concerns of treading knee-deep into an established set of rules and characters were quickly abated. Despite sharing a cast and a creative team with the 2018-2019 TBS-MBS show, director Tsutomu Hanabusa and co-screenwriter Minato Takano craft a pretty self-contained narrative that only asks you to remember the dozens of characters that they throw at us in the first 15 minutes or so.
It also helps that there are few moments when the film isn’t actually explaining what we are seeing. Like the darker cousin of Chihayafuru, 90% of the dialogue is exposition for what it happening in a particular card game. Even a high-pressure game of rock/paper/scissors comes complete with a running narrative of the tactics and reactions to the surprisingly tense twists that it often takes.
From the extreme camera angles to Michiru’s seemingly Pirates of the Caribbean inspired score, everything in KAKEGURUI is completely and unapologetically over-the-top. Japanese live-action adaptations often attempt this kind of fidelity, recreating reactions and textual styles that should really only work on page or in animation. Haruka Fukuhara as the beleaguered Arukibiju, for example, does an amazing job of delivering this kind of madcap performance.
To the film’s credit, this faithfulness results in a visually exciting piece, albeit a chaotically edited one. Building to an impressively staged battle royale across the school grounds, and an intense game of cards that even James Bond would have trouble keeping up with, this is the kind of fun that is just the right amount of bonkers.
2019 | Japan | DIR: Tsutomu Hanabusa | WRITERS: Minato Takano, Tsutomu Hanabusa | CAST: Minami Hamabe, Mahiro Takasugi, Elaiza Ikeda | DISTRIBUTOR: Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)
MASQUERADE HOTEL (マスカレード・ホテル) arrives with all the fanfare you’d expect from a film based on the works of a blockbuster writer. Indeed, the screen rights to novelist Keigo Higashino’s most releases, including The Crimes That Bind and Laplace’s Witch, underwent serious bidding battles.
A series of murders across Tokyo lead Detective Kosuke Nitta (Takuya Kimura) to Hotel Koruteshia Tokyo, where he believes the next crime will take place. Working undercover as a concierge, he encounters the super-professional Naomi Yamagishi (Masami Nagasawa) who tries to teach him the value of good customer service.
With the flourish of a CG-enhanced zoom in on Japan from space, there’s a sense that we’re arriving in medias res with this film. This probably has something to do with the fact that this is based on a series of books all all of the characters are firmly established in the creator’s minds. This gives director Masayuki Suzuki (Princess Toyotomi), continuing a theme from 2017’s Honnuji Hotel, confident ground to stand on.
It also means a little bit of controlled chaos in the narrative, with screenwriter Michitaka Okada (the Liar Game series of films) flipping from one subplot to the next. Effectively operating as a “closed room” murder mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie, the odd asides and flashbacks feel more like giant signposts than subtle clues at times.
Yet the cast in universally excellent. Suzuki and actor Takuya Kimura previously worked together on the drama series Hero and subsequent film of the same name, and he slides into an easy leading man role here. It’s Masami Nagasawa (Before We Vanish, Gintama, Your Name) who rightly takes the film by the horns and steers it. Supporting cast includes the likes of the recognisable Fumiyo Kohinata and Zen Kajihara for a rounded gallery of faces.
A slick and crowd-pleasing adaptation, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect opening night film for the Japanese Film Festival 2019. Without giving away the twisty conclusion too much, the film certainly sets itself up for further adventures. With a likeable set of leads and an in-built set of stories that can spin-off from the core, this is the kind of hotel that you’d happily make a return visit to after check-out.
2019 | Japan | DIR: Masayuki Suzuki | WRITERS: Michitaka Okada (based on the novel by Keigo Higashino) | CAST: Takuya Kimura, Masami Nagasawa | DISTRIBUTOR: Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 132 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)
There’s an old joke. Two elderly critics are sitting in a cinema, and one of them says “Boy, the films at this place are really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know, and such short runtimes.”
The deceptively low-key release of JOKER is ostensibly at odds with the fanfare that usually accompanies a comic book adaptation. Indeed, director Todd Phillips has described the film, which took out the top prize at the Venice International Film Festival, as “a way to sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic book film.”
The hubris of that comment, one that both puts down the source material and its fans while claiming an elevation, seems to unironically get to the heart of the perceived societal denigration he and co-writer Scott Silver are possibly railing against in their screenplay. I say possibly because this is a film that casts its nihilistic web wide while tapping into the last dying angst of the middle-aged white man in America.
Set in an indistinct period reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s 1970s New York, we’re introduced to sad clown and aspiring comedian Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), who lives with his unsupportive mother (Frances Conroy) and works a variety of small jobs on the mean streets of Gotham City. A condition causing him to laugh spontaneously masks his inner pain, yet after being repeatedly downtrodden an act of violent retaliation is the spark that ignites a city.
It’s clear from the beginning that we are not meant to trust what we are seeing in JOKER. The character has long been shrouded in mystery in comic book lore, and even those books that purport to reveal an origin – most prominently Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s controversial The Killing Joke – flip the script on us at the last moment. Despite Phillips’ initial protests, it’s a legacy that his film is indelibly tied to, awkwardly wedging in a subplot that gives Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), his butler, and some kid named Bruce prominent cameos.
Moore’s comic was as much about the mirror figures of Batman and Joker as it was about the spiralling hellhole of humanity Moore perceived during the 80s. Yet Phillips and Silver focus on the latter. The stated key influences of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, complete with Robert De Niro in the equivalent of the Jerry Lewis role, make the film more about angry male entitlement and obsession than justified outrage.
Which brings us to some of the more worrying turns of the film. The Joker has always been a problematic character when it comes mental health issues and misogyny, whether it is his homicidal tendencies or his abusive relationship with Harley Quinn. Here Fleck’s non-specific issues – which we are told led to previous institutionalisation and multiple meds – are how society labels him. “The thing about having a mental illness,” he scrawls in his barely literate journal, “is that people expect you to behave as if you don’t.”
Which would be a fine and dandy take if that treatment wasn’t coupled with such extreme violence. When Fleck lashes out, the faded 70s façade drips with gooey red. “It is not the intention of the film, the filmmakers or the studio to hold this character up as a hero,” said Warner Bros. in a statement. Yet at no point do we get any real disapproval of his actions either: yes, some of the people he kills are bad people, and Gotham is known for its vigilantism in later years. Violence is a liberating quality for the character: even though the film doesn’t actively condone his actions, it doesn’t condemn them either.
Neither does it fully pick a side politically, taking a kind of centre-right approach. It hates everyone in equal measure, which is textbook nihilism. The rich are sneering and dismissive of the rest of the world and deserve what they get in Fleck’s mind. Yet the film doesn’t support the grassroots protests of the masses either, depicting the popular uprising as unruly and a symptom of the societal disease. At least until a dramatic turn at the climax where it does appear to suggest that the Joker just might be onto something. At least The Dark Knight’s Joker was honest in wanting to watch the world burn, and the essential goodness of the people won out in Christopher Nolan’s Gotham.
Underneath these layers of grime and unpleasantness, there’s much to be admired on a technical level. Phoenix turns in a performance that easily matches his underrated outing in You Were Never Really Here, physically emaciated and concentrating a world of emotional pain into an upturned lip or a haunting teardrop. It’s a shame that the female characters, including the formidable Zazie Beetz (as a neighbour) and veteran Conroy, are nothing more than objects or barriers respectively. Lawrence Sher (Godzilla: King of the Monsters) nails the period look (whatever period that may be) in some gorgeous photography.
As the film approaches release, Phillips has begun to use the same comic books he derided to defend himself against accusations of toxic masculinity. “[I]t’s a fictional character in a fictional world that’s been around for 80 years,” he told the press, comparing his film to the comparatively positive reaction the violent John Wick films have received. This not only misses the point of the concerns but unseats the notion that this is a “real movie” acting in the real world.
Which brings us back to that other old joke about the brother of a man who thinks he’s a chicken. When asked why he doesn’t turn him in, he simply says he needed the eggs. While I’m paraphrasing that joke from the finale of another problematic 1970s filmmaker, the fact that a film like this exists in 2019 – post #MeToo and #TimesUp – is totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because someone still needs the eggs apparently. Even if they are scrambled.
2019 | US | DIRECTOR: Todd Phillips | WRITERS: Todd Phillips and Scott Silver | CAST: Joaquin Phoenix, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Robert De Niro | DISTRIBUTOR: Roasdshow Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 124 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 3 October 2019 (AUS)
There is a sub-sub-genre of slow space cinema that has rolled out at a measured pace over the decades. From 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris through to Gravity and Interstellar, man has been slipping the surly bonds of Earth and touching the face of something otherworldly. Director James Gray’s AD ASTRA follows in this tradition, mixing ennui with exploration.
At some point in the not-too-distant future of humanity, evidenced by a giant space antenna in the opening scenes, our Solar System is struck by a series of threatening power surges. Cool-as-a-cucumber astronaut Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is tasked with journeying into deep space to stop the pioneering astronaut that Space Command believes is responsible: Roy’s father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones).
From the moment Pitt starts plummeting towards Earth in the opening scenes, Gray ensures that this is one of the more “realistic” space films of recent memory. Eschewing the clean Star Trek future, or the gothic space trucker leanings of Alien, the production design team aim for something more timeless here. Until we see the commercialisation of the Moon’s colonies – a more sanitised version of Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall– this could be set in any time or place.
Gray steadily builds on this aesthetic by adding in logical escalation points. Space travel is not simply a warp speed away from one’s destination: Pitt’s character must fly commercially to the Moon, avoid space pirates (in a brilliant, almost silent, chase sequence), hitch a ride to Mars, before stowing away to his final destination. There’s a wonderfully tense scene that uses nightmare logic: Pitt runs towards his destination, but due to the gravity and his suit, his steps don’t seem to be getting him any closer to the ship.
Yet this is all there to sell the more intimate personal drama. Despite the sci-fi shopfront, this is a character piece about a man incapable of intimacy thanks to his unresolved issues with his father. Pitt’s unemotional facade borders on the robotic, but the emotion tap bursts at the right moment. A (inter)stellar cast includes Donald Sutherland in a small but crucial role. The very male-focused script sees a barely present Liv Tyler as a character who exists largely in memory, while the formidable Ruth Negga turns up for a few lines of exposition in a wasted opportunity.
Which might be where some people land on AD ASTRA. While it follows the trend of current space cinema, landing somewhere between The Martian and Interstellar, it may leave some viewers out in the cold. Even so, the ultimate resolution is an uplifting one, and perhaps an unexpected one given the bleak outlook of the rest of the film. It’s a reminder that while our terrestrial interests may be mired in commerce and war, there’s a great big beautiful universe just outside the borders of our big blue marble. Plus: there’s also space monkeys.
2019 | US | DIRECTOR: James Gray | WRITERS: James Gray and Ethan Gross | CAST: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland | DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 124 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 September 2019 (AUS)
There is something familiar about THE INSTITUTE, the latest release from Stephen King. Before the public got a chance to read it, speculation was rife that this was connected somehow to Firestarter, where the similarly named The Shop dealt with a different breed of special kids. King doesn’t go down this path specifically, but he does trot out a few of his greatest hits along the way.
The book begins with a bit of misdirection. Or at least a diversion. King introduces us to Tim Jamieson, a former cop who finds himself working as a “night knocker” in the small town of DuPray, South Carolina. Tim has a past but finds a kind of redemption among the people of this small southern town. This is usually where things to go horribly wrong in that town.
Yet this is not where King wants to spend his time, perhaps because he’s already doomed half of the suburban vistas of fictional America. We spend most of our time following 12-year-old Luke Ellis, a boy with remarkable intelligence and evidence of low-level telekinesis (or “TK”). Agents of the titular Institute murder his parents and secret him away to their facility in Maine. Waking up in a room almost identical to his own, he meets several other children with various abilities.
As the book’s title would imply, much of the narrative is concerned with the experimentation that takes place in Maine’s Institute. In fact, aside from Tim’s brief introduction in the first few chapters, King claustrophobically encases us within its complex walls for almost half the hefty novel. It’s here that it slows down to an incredibly measured pace, mired somewhat in the cruelty of childhood torture and the evil that organisations do.
Haven’t we learned not to mess with psychic kids?
Which would be fine if the characters gelled, but here is another rare misstep. Luke’s inner voice serves as the glue for much of lengthy middle act, but the children around him serve only as sounding boards for ideas or as stock character types. King typically writes groups of children incredibly well, and you don’t need to look much further than It or “The Body” (aka Stand By Me) for evidence of this. An exception to this is Avery, an adorable urchin with souped-up powers, but I just don’t feel as though I got to know anybody beyond their names or most recent torture experiment.
This certainly isn’t the first time King has dealt with the subject matter. After all, a lot of folks: they got a little bit of shine to them. He’s been playing with psychics since his debut Carrie in 1974. The Shining and Doctor Sleep, of course. Yet there’s a a few shades of The Dead Zone, the aforementioned Firestarter, and Peter Straub collaboration The Talisman about this book too. If it isn’t obvious, I’m an unabashed fan of King’s work, but THE INSTITUTE never seems to rise above the sum of these parts. It’s solid a black ops thriller with children in peril, but those are a dime a dozen.
There’s a running joke that Stephen King isn’t very good at endings, something that the It: Chapter Two adaptation made fun of this year. THE INSTITUTE might be an exemplar of this reputation, but it also never really takes off in the first place. Yet it’s easy to see why this has already been optioned for its own limited edition series from no less a talent than David E. Kelley: it sticks to the rails (quite literally at one point) and plays to King’s most recognisable traits.
2019 | US | WRITER: Stephen King | PUBLISHER: Scribner (US), Hachette Publishing (Australia) | LENGTH: 576 pages | RELEASE DATE: 10 September 2019
