Bag of Bones

Damn. As a fan of Stephen King, I wanted to like this film/mini series. A lot. But when I lost count of the number of horror clichés used in the first 15 minutes, I resigned with a heavy heart that this was going to be a long, hard haul. In fact, I only stuck through it because it was Stephen King. Had it been anything else, I would have turned it off. What clichés you ask? A few (and there are many) come to mind: The bus out of nowhere with a driver that is blind only to pedestrians; dreams within dreams within dreams, some four or five levels deep (no, not interesting the Inception kind); startling us instead of building suspense and really scaring us (there is a huge difference in both effort and payoff); inanimate objects that suddenly come to life just when the story needs them to; animals leaping out of dark places. It’s so depressingly easy to list them I have to stop. It seems the viewing audience has become accustomed to these clichés as being scary. It’s a trend that has to stop.  Don’t be fooled by the IMDb rating of 9.9 stars as that is clearly bogus. 40% of those rating the film gave it a perfect 10. Wow. If you need any other convincing, read the IMDb viewer reviews instead for a more accurate rating which averages out to about 3.9 stars (from 14 reviews at time of writing).