Kino Lorber
A veritable genre of its own, the Stephen King adaptation has been a mainstay of eerie entertainment on screens big and small for just shy of half a century since Brian De Palma’s Carrie took audiences by telekinetic storm in 1976.
With The Monkey currently making audiences cringe and cackle with delight, it seems unlikely that King adaptations will ever be a thing of the past.
While the earlier King adaptations were overwhelmingly worthwhile visions of the author’s work, quality inevitable becomes an issue with such an expansive roster of adaptations, not least thanks to the dollar signs the King adaptation would embed in the eyes and minds of studios executives.
As a result, as the 1980s went on, King adaptations were greenlit left, right and center, with little regard to how well the source material would transfer from page to screen, not to mention how slapdash the production value of these adaptations would also increasingly become.
By the time the 1990s rolled around, the market was so oversaturated with adaptations that their appeal became disappearingly small.
Based on the short story of the same name, Graveyard Shift adapts one of King’s earlier short stories, which tells the tale of widowed drifter John Hall (David Andrews), who finds himself in need of work when he arrives in the small Maine town of Gates Falls.
It turns out that work is easy to come by, as the town’s textile mill is seemingly always hiring, but it soon becomes apparent to John that the callous foreman Warwick (Stephen Macht) runs the mill with a campaign of terror.
To make matters worse, the place is also overrun with menacing rats, but as more and more people disappear after entering the basement, it seems there is something even worse than your average rat lurking in the depths below the mill.
Graveyard Shift is a filthy, sweaty movie, the set design feeling like a messier precursor for 1995’s The Mangler, which is obviously a backhanded compliment, and if there is anything that makes Graveyard Shift stand out from other adaptations, it is the dubious honor of being the adaptation that was so poorly received that – outside the stellar Misery, which followed a few months later – it marked the end of successful big screen King adaptations being a regular occurrence for a good long while.
Despite the film being just shy of 90 minutes long, it drags on relentlessly, cementing the film’s main problem, namely its inability to build any notable sense of urgency or tension beyond the run-of-the-mill interpersonal relationships, and even those fail to engage beyond a very superficial level, as the film oozes wasted potential.
The performances are flat across the board, except for Macht making his character easy to hate by bringing a cruel charisma to the table, but his extremely heavy Maine accent becomes distracting in a film so lacking in directorial vision that no amount of sadistic asshole foreman behavior could possibility elevate the film.
Brad Dourif popping up in a film can work wonders, and while he is as watchable as ever, much like Macht, Dourif feels like his talents are squandered on a rushed cash grab of a film.
The main creature effects are not only underwhelming, they also feel tacked on in a bid to get creature feature fans in seats, and the kindest thing to say about them is that they feel like a prototype for The Night Flier creature design at best.
Some King adaptations are excellent, some are mediocre, and some are just plain awful.
Graveyard Shift is definitely mediocre at best, and its lack of panache is only emphasized by the timeless terror of the Misery adaptation opening mere months later to critical acclaim and an Academy Award for Kathy Bates’ chilling turn as the utterly unhinged Annie Wilkes.
Extras include commentary, interviews, and trailer.
As such, Graveyard Shift will not impress any newcomers who are looking to unearth a forgotten gem, but the film does nonetheless have a certain allure for fans of King adaptations who have a proclivity for cinematic failures as comfort viewing, but if you are not into watching garbage cinema on purpose, you will probably have a better time with Misery.
Verdict: 4 out of 10.
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