All roads in Sitges lead to Stephen King

SilosAs explained in the documentary King on screen, available on Filmin, director Mike Flanagan was very attracted to horror movies but they scared him so much that, at age 10, he decided to try horror books and read Item, by Stephen King. "It was a huge mistake," he recalls. "I didn't want to keep reading because I was so scared and had terrible nightmares, but I cared so much about the characters that I couldn't stop. And I realized that each chapter offered me an opportunity to learn to be brave. Because that's what horror is, a training in exercising courage in two. Horror and Stephen King became my hero," he explains.

Almost four decades later, Flanagan has not only become an essential filmmaker of contemporary horror, but also the one who best connected with the work of his literary hero, first directing Gerald's Game (2017) and later Doctor Sleep (2019), the sequel to The glow. And this Sunday it was screened at the Sitges Festival Chuck's Life, which is based on a story included in the 2020 anthology Blood rules which has a more playful and experimental narrative structure than is usual for the author of Carrie. Flanagan, who was unable to travel to Sitges, follows King's three-act score and approaches the life of a man starting with the final act, which coincides with an apocalypse that is extinguishing life on Earth and whose protagonist only appears in a few mysterious advertisements.

Terror is present in dribs and drabs in Chuck's Life, which falls into the most tender and humanistic vein of the American writer and subordinates the supernatural element to an exploration of the importance of any given life and the moments that make it worth living. In fact, its emotional climax is not the final resolution of the mystery that makes all the pieces fit together, but the central scene of the second act, in which Tom Hiddleston (adult Chuck) improvises a spontaneous dance to the rhythm of a drummer playing in the street. It must be said that the film has an unashamed relationship with emotions that at times borders on disaster, but which is saved by the nobility with which King writes his characters.

Walk, walk, damn it

In Sitges all roads lead to Stephen King, and the program also includes the latest adaptation of his work, precisely the first novel he wrote while still at university, The long walk, but which he finally published in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman and which the publishing house Males Herbes published in Catalan in 2020. The long march, which will close the festival on Saturday the 19th, is set in an economically ruined United States where, to combat the population's discouragement, every year a march is held in which fifty young people walk along the road day and night and, as they faint and stop, they are executed until only one remains.

In this dystopian tale directed by Francis Lawrence (I am legend) resonate strongly with King's social concerns. He wrote the novel at the height of the Vietnam War protests and in a highly politicized environment. The critique of the state and the culture of competitiveness may be somewhat simplistic, but its paean to friendship is contagious; and all of this gives off a certain modest, 1970s B-movie feel that plays to its advantage. survival agonizing that gives continuity to the acting career of Cooper Hoffman, the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman discovered in Licorice Pizza.

King is also the origin of the most anticipated series of this edition of Sitges, It: Welcome to Derry, produced by Andy and Bárbara Muschietti, who are responsible for its two-part film adaptation. The series functions as a prequel to the film and explores the origin of the monster Pennywise, played once again by Bill Skarsgård. But the titles present at Sitges are just the tip of the iceberg: in November Edgar Wright will premiere The running man, Mike Flanagan works on a series of Carrie and will adapt The Dark Tower, JT Mollner (screenwriter of The long march) will do the same with The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Doug Liman will bring it to the big screen for the first time The stand. And there are projects underway on Cujo, The talisman, Billy Summers, Christine...Stephen King's influence on modern audiovisual horror is enormous.