The Kingdom vs. Kingdom Hospital
I was all settled in to watch Mario Bava’s La Maschera del demonio (aka. Black Sunday) last night, but I paused it to eat, and flipped through TV channels. On AXN, I came across a guy who looked familiar, being left in a darkened basement by a goth elevator operator. The guy was Bruce Davison, and the scene was instantly recognizable as horror. I decided to watch for a few minutes, and things started to look familiar.
Indeed, it was an episode of Kingdom Hospital much-vaunted Stephen King-scripted remake of Lars von Trier’s Riget. It was similar enough that it was recognizable to me within less than a minute, which I suppose is good, since I’m a huge fan of the original miniseries (and also, although slightly less, of the sequel). But then things started to go downhill.
I don’t think the concept of Riget is impossible to translate to a US setting, it’s pretty primal and international in itself. But Kingdom Hospital totally misunderstands what’s going on. The implicit (there are ghosts and spirits roaming the hospital) is made explicit (we spend a lot of time roaming around darkened corridors under the hospital, which are filled with spirits, and a guy who’s in a coma walks around there talking to them). The ghost of the mysterious young girl, Mary, which was rarely seen, enigmatic, and uncommunicative in the original, is now a cute waif with lots of dark eyeshadow, and she walks around and talks to the coma guy, explaining to him what’s going on. There’s a giant needle-toothed ant-eater spirit around too, whatever the hell that means, and there’s pop-punk music on part of the soundtrack.
It just doesn’t work. It feels like a mix between ER and one of those crappy horror/SF TV series like Supernatural or Stargate, complete with acceptable but annoying acting. In addition, the writing is full of Stephen King touches, from his most standard repertoire. I like Stephen King’s writing, but he’s prone to repeating himself, and repeating themes. Here, there’s a guy in a coma after being hit by a car, who King himself has apparently stated was directly based on his own much publicised accident. There’s also an old-fashioned, weird expression, “It’s called doing a solid”, repeated with mystical significance. There are self-consciously quirky characters, in contrast to the natural, charmingly quirky ones from the original. Etc., etc.
To add insult to injury, reportedly Sony Pictures wanted to shoot it on HD, but the director, Craig R. Baxley, whose most recognizable earlier effort was a few episodes of The A-Team, wanted to shoot on 35 mm, so Stephen King personally paid the difference in cost. That’s just silly for several reasons, the first being that the original was grainy and weird looking, because it had been shot on Super 16, edited on various video formats, and blown up to 35mm, on purpose. Also, insisting on 35mm instead of HD might make sense for something that’s going to be shown in theaters (possibly), but for something that’s primarily for TV, it’s just stupid. It stinks of hubris and pretentiousness, Stephen King and the director both wanting to make a “real movie”.
Avoid, avoid. I watched the majority of one episode only, but I can assure you I’m not watching any more. Stick with the original, which is available as a region-free DVD release (although with burnt-in subtitles, last I checked).
To top it off, I got annoyed and didn’t get around to watching my Italian horror movie.