1922

Based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, 1922 is a new released American horror-drama film. 1922 is the sixth film adapted from Stephen King’s novels in this year. Stephen King is a well known author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction and fantasy. My blog post Gerald’s Game is another horror film based on King’s novel of the same name. Both Gerald’s Game and 1922 were based on the protagonist psychological activity.

1922 is about how a selfish father destroyed his own family. The main protagonist in this movie is a farmer, Wilfred who killed his wife, Arlette, with aid from his son Henry in order to keep their land. Wilfred and Henry murdered Arlette and throw the corpse into a dry well. Arlette's body was bitten by thousand of rats. Their son Henry became quiet and soon started to hate the murder, which made his girlfriend Shannon concerned. Henry and Shannon ran away after Shannon was discovered to be pregnant and was required to stay in a religious institution and then give away the children.

In the winter, Wilfred’s house became infected with rats, and he has his hand amputated due to the infection caused by rats. In the other scenes, Shannon was shot when they robbing people, and she died in the next morning, followed the suicide of Henry. Coincidentally or deliberately,  their bodies were tore by rats like Arlette’s body. Wilfred finally decided to move into city, however his rest of life was accompanied by rats. The whole movie was composed of scenes of rats: rats were biting the corpse, rats were standing on the bed, which makes the audience sick.  

This movie  can be considered as a reflection of the urbanization in the United States. With the process of industrialization, the urbanization rate increased dramatically in 1920s. Due to the industrialization, which made a great impact on the traditional agriculture, many farmers moved to cities to seek for the opportunity. However there always some old fashion people like Wilfred chose to stay in his land and protect their lands. There is nothing wrong to keep their land, but the protagonist in this movie should never protect his land by murdering his wife, and according to the movie, the land should belong to his wife. Wilfred’s way to teach children is totally unacceptable. How could a father tell his son to murder their beloved family.

I feel Stephen King likes to teach people something in his works. In 1922, the protagonist wrote down his confession and kept saying there always ways to solve problems. However, it was too late for Wilfred to realized that he could solve the conflict between selling the land and keep it.

In conclusion, 1922 has a good story reflecting the history and telling people there always more than one way to solve the problem. With the compact but flat storyline, film 1922 is neither a good nor a bad movie.

1922: Killing is Bad, m'kay?

1922 is the latest Stephen King adaptation to come out this year and the second to be released and distributed by Netflix. Directed by Zak Hilditch, the film follows the James family as they endure internal fighting in 1922, leading to father Wilfred and his son Henry (Thomas Jane and Dylan Schmid, respectfully) murdering Arlette, the family's unloving wife and neglectful mother. Without getting into spoiler territory, the rest of the film details the effects the murder has on the family, leading to complete misery.
In a year in which It was very good, Gerald's Game was very good, and The Dark Tower..... was a movie, I think 1922 takes the cake and is also one of the better King adaptations of the past 30 years, maybe all time. While I don't think the film holds a candle to King's best adaptations, I do think it is easily on of his ten best.
All of the performances here are terrific, especially Thomas Jane. Jane was previously in another King adaptation The Mist and now returns to give the performance of his career. Even though his character is a cold blooded murderer, Jane is able to give his character s strong level of likability and sympathy. Dylan Schmid's performance as the son Henry was also great, especially considering his role had to have the most range associated with it. Schmid has to go from innocent quiet farm boy to selfish mean spirited in the blink of an eye, something a young actor like himself pulls of quite convincingly. To round out the cast is Molly Parker as the cold Arlette. Parker is also fantastic here as she is terrific at playing such a soulless, selfish, unlikable character. She's so unlikable that it doesn't surprise me that the two guys wanted her dead.
The atmosphere of the film is also terrific as the film feels very eerie and tense throughout. This is a combination of the directing, the solid musical score, and the setting. A horror film set on a mid American farm is nothing new, but the reason for that is because it can be so effective. With the score, it sounds eerily similar to The Shawshank Redemption (ironically another King adaptation), except there is something much darker and sinister going on with it. You can just tell listening to the music that something bad is going to happen. I think the score played a big part in making the film as good as it was. Finally is the directing by Hilditch, who clearly had a good vision for the story and what he wanted to bring to the table. Instead of directing it as a straight horror film, Hilditch decides to film it more as a drama-psychological thriller that definitely helps to distinguish itself from other King works as well as the other horror films to come out this year.
The final thing I strongly want to focus on here is the fantastic themes of the film. Even though what Wilfred and Henry do is completely wrong, they still do have actually decent reasons. Not only is Arlette the definition of a woman you don't want to be a mother or wife, but she was going to uproot the family to the city, destroying Wilfred's livelihood and ruining Henry's relationship with a farm girl which clearly is more than just a fling. On top of all of that, neither character is inherently a bad person. That all said, the murder destroys their lives as Wilfred begins to slip into madness and Henry life is ruined as he falls down a path of crime. What makes this all the much better is that they both get away with it in the end. It really is great to see a movie that deals with murder and is bold enough to say that maybe going to jail isn't the worst consequence of murder. This is all summed up by Wilfred at the end of the film with his final lines being, "In the end, we all get caught." He might not have been caught by the police, but he was caught in a much darker, moral way. So many films romanticize murder making it look like nothing. This is a film that decides instead to show what murder might actually do to someone psychologically.
It is a horrible thing to take another human being's life, something that is against every human law this Earth has ever had. It is never okay, even if you have the "best intentions." Murder is something you'll have to live with for the rest of your life, behind bars or not. To my future child, it is never okay to kill someone, no matter what. To finish with a quote from Clint Eastwood's Best Picture Winner Unforgiven: "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."
Anyways, if you get a chance to check it out, I highly recommend it, especially with Halloween just around the corner.