This past weekend it snowed about two feet at my house, making the outside an undesirable place to be. Luckily, Hulu and Netflix have many many things that I have placed on my Watchlist. Unfortunately for my Watchlist Castle Rock was not one of them, meaning that Watchlist is still just as big as it was before. Now, Castle Rock hadn’t been on my watchlist previously because I hadn’t thought to put it on once it had come out. But on Friday someone had mentioned watching Castle Rock, thus started the weekend binge. I finished this series in two days, the fastest I’ve ever finished a series.
The series starts out with a sheriff of a small town searching the woods only to find a young boy standing in the middle of a frozen lake. The town the sheriff is from: Castle Rock, Maine; the year: 1991. Now, fast forward to 2018, it has been 27 years since the scene with the forest and we are now follow a man get ready for his day. He is retiring today, but his secret won’t let him. But he is not the focus of the story; his secret is. Can you believe that this is just the first half of the first episode?
This show definitely does suspense very well. But what do you expect from a series based off of the works of Stephen King? It keeps you captivated and intrigued the entire time. It keeps you guessing and makes you gasp. You will always think you know what’s going on but then suddenly be confused. It is very good at making you think. That being said, it’s not an easy series to understand on its own. If I hadn’t spent the entirety of last year reading It, I wouldn’t have understood most of what was going on. I also have background from other Stephen King Stories that I’ve either read, or watched as a show or a movie.
(Spoilers Ahead)
Without this background I wouldn’t have understood anything having to do with the hotel episodes.The episode where they brought in the rift and world traveling barely made sense as it was. Three entire character backstories would have made no sense at all. I’m still kind of confused by the episode about Henry’s mother. (It was cool that she played Carrie in the original movie though.) So over all I think that it’s a good show for the right audience but I don’t think it’s a show that anyone could watch and immediately get into.
This opinion is more solidified by the Syfy network show Haven (currently on Netflix). When I had started watching Haven I had just barely heard of Stephen King. I hadn’t read any of his books and I had only ever seen two of the movies made based on them. But when I watched Haven I wasn’t confused at all. Haven was its own story that could be followed without any other story. It was fun to try and find references to the other stories, but they weren’t an integral part of the main plot. (I almost made a terrible pun there, be proud that I didn’t.) It was a good introduction to the Stephen King universe.
mercury205
Boredom and Words of Nothingness 