Needful Things | | Cast : | Max von Sydow, Ed Harris | | Director : | Fraser Clarke Heston | | Studio : | MGM/UA Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | August 27, 1993 | | DVD Released Date : | August 27, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | April 17, 2005 | | Summary | 0.5 STARS: Just BORING...plain and simple. | Content
 | Stephen King's "Needful Things" seems promising from the outside looking in...oh, but how looks can be so deceiving when it comes to horror movies. Okay, you can't get much more evil than having a movie with the Devil himself as a villain. Also, you got great actors and actresses in this movie as well. So, what went wrong? Well, the essential problem with "Needful Things" is that it is simply boring to watch. Yes, Ed Harris, Max Von Sydow and Bonnie Bedelia are great actors but that won't save a boring script.
"Needful Things" is about Satan moving into a small town and setting up a store called Needful Things in which he has a little bit of everything that people want, but he exacts a price from his customers and it is not money. Satan requires little evil deeds from his customers that will ultimately tear this town apart. So, in essence, you have people selling their souls to the Devil because of their greed. The plot sounds pretty good from an outsider's point of view. The problem is that the plot just doesn't work very well. What you end up having in "Needful Things" is a bunch of weak subplots with people in disputes with one another and man plotting mischief against his neighbor, all of which makes the Devil quite happy.
When one dies, that person has essentially sold his soul to Satan and the Devil literally adds up another soul to write in his book of Hell and damnation. But, the subplots really don't work because it just isn't interesting enough to keep a sophisticated horror movie viewer attention. In most cases, I have found that long movies or mini series work quite well, but not in this movie..."Needful Things" is waaaaayyyy too long and that also brings this movie down. I admit that I found these disputes between smalltown people and the mischief done by these people to suit the Devil's ends quite boring and just downright lame. Also, the movie doesn't do a very good job of presenting the Devil to the audience...he seems pretty benign for the kind of Devil I imagine. I would certainly find Damien in "The Omen" to be much more sinister and scary than the Devil in "Needful Things".
Also, one does not sympathize with the characters in this movie, not even the little boy...it just seems that the whole town is a bunch of losers in which they are not just selfish but also stupid. In short, I just don't think "Needful Things" works very well as a movie and the script is largely ineffective and boring, much too mundane to make a good horror movie. I would give this movie more than just 0.5 stars based on effort, but I can't justify that because the movie is too damn boring and frankly the movie is terrible. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 17, 2005 | | Summary | GREAT book, GOOD movie. | Content
| stephen kings movie needful things is NOT 100% true to the novel but it would be impossible to be with all them details, but with what material from the book that they choose to work with they did a fine job, this is a very good film with an ending thats definatly better then the cheesey ending of the great novel. i own this dvd and sometimes just throw it on to watch the last 10 minutes with ed harris yelling and screaming to the people of castle rock that the destruction of the town is the devils bidding aka leland gaunt. this is my second favorite king movie. my first is storm of the century. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 10, 2005 | | Summary | Most people just don't get it.... | Content
| I think a lot of people are just too much of a die hard King fan to appreciate this film for what it is. It is a dark comedy strongly based in some degrees on Kings novel but loosely in others. It has taken all the best aspects and built on them an amazing structure of dark comedy.
The film by far does not go into the depth of the intricate web that Leland Gaunt has spun around the town with his tricks but you definitely get the idea and many of the actors certainly do a wonderful job at portraying the after effects. The scene with the two women fighting from room to room while 'Ave Maria' gently plays in the background has to be one of the most brilliant and unforgettable scenes in a movie i have ever seen.
That and other very well done parts of this movie, a wonderful score by Patrick Doyle and not to mention Max von Sydow's brilliant portrayal of the devil make this one of the few movies I like to watch at least once a year!
Even if you are not a Stephen King fan (or maybe only if you aren't) you should greatly enjoy this film. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 28, 2004 | | Summary | Why don't they release the extended edition? | Content
| I have seen two versions of "Needful Things" the regular theatrical cut which runs at about 113 minutes and the extended edition that used to play on TNT (which is actually better) that has a running time of about 175 minutes, the full program with commercials was about 4 hours long.
Where this version fails is that the character development is rushed and they focus more on the "deeds" than what the book does. The novel itself is very excellent and the first part allows the characters to be developed. Part two of the novel is left to the "deeds" and part three focuses on the chaos that results and the aftermath.
However, in the movie, the "deeds" and the chaos and not on the characters nor the aftermath. I think that "Needful Things" could be put on film, as long as it's a three part miniseries and not just one movie.
However, this film does have some good things about it, the main good thing is Max von Syndow's performance (although when I read the book I imagined someone like Christopher Lee). Another good thing is how accurate to the book that the "deeds" were carried out.
Some may say that this is the worst Stephen King adaptation, but I can think of a couple that are worse: Dreamcatcher, Graveyard Shift, Thinner, and Tommyknockers. This one, is only fifth worse. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 23, 2004 | | Summary | It sucked! | Content
| To those you who have read my other Stephen King movie reviews, I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record, but I don't care. Even though I've said it before, I'm going to say it again; the book was better, WAY BETTER.
Max Von Sydow barely managed to save this mess from being a complete disaster. It's an extremely watered down retelling of a great story about a man/demon named "Leland Gaunt" (Sydow) who opens up a new store in the town of Castle Rock, Maine. He calls the store "Needful Things" and In it he sells you things that grant you your wildest dreams, but of course there is a shocking and terrible price to be paid for such items.
The script is so haphazardly thrown together, tamed down, and rushed that it will probably seem incomplete even to those people who haven't read the book. The movie doesn't go into nearly enough detail in regard to the extent to which Gaunt goes to pit the towns citizens against each other. Several characters are combined or just plain left out. Biographical facts about certain people are changed, or omitted. Sheriff Alan Pangborn (Ed Harris), for example is a widower in the book. In the movie, however, it is suggested that he is just a bachelor. His lover, Polly Chalmers's (Bonnie Bedelia) true reasons for leaving, and then moving back to Castle Rock aren't even hinted at. The book actually takes time to build up to it's explosive climax. The events in the novel happen over the course of a month, whereas everything in the film takes place in less then a week. Give me a break, will ya?
Overall this was a big disappointment for me. The only real redeeming quality of the whole miserable mess was Max Von Sydow. He was perfectly cast as the demonic store proprietor. I think this would have made a better HBO miniseries to tell you the truth. There's only so much from a 700+ page book that you can squeeze into an hour and 45 minutes. Not that they couldn't have simply made the film longer or anything. I guess making people sit in the movie theater for more than two hours would be tantamount to asking people to get off their lazy asses and pay attention to something for a change. We just can't have THAT. OH, NO! |
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