1922 - Film Review
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Plot
Wilfred James (Thomas Jane), a farmer conspires to murder his wife (Molly Parker) for financial gain and convinces his teenage son (Dylan Schmid) to participate and they deal with the consequences of it.
Review
This is the fourth Stephen King adaptation we've gotten this year and the third one I have seen, I haven't seen The Dark Tower. This is also the second Stephen King Netflix film we got this year after Gerald's Game, which I have seen.
I'd say I'm more of a Stephen King newbie than I am a huge fan. I have quite a few of his books but have only read Misery out of the ones I own and I've read parts of some of his others. I haven't read the story for this either.
The film is actually quite gory, but it's based off a Stephen King story, so you should expect that. Like I've never seen Thomas Jane crush a rat to death with his foot, a rat coming out of a dead woman's mouth, or a cow falling into a well to cover up that same dead woman.
It's also quite disturbing when Wilfred and his son murder his wife and then Wilfred is haunted by his wife's ghost in the last two acts. The scares are actually some of my favorite parts of the movie, as they are not vivid, but they show Wilfred's suffering as a very slow rot.
The film is told through narration. In the year 1930, Wilfred is writing a letter confessing to the murder he committed in the year 1922, then confronted at the end by the ghosts of Arlette (Molly Parker), Henry (Dylan Schmid) and his girlfriend Shannon (Kaitlyn Bernard). I'm not saying how those other two died, because this is a movie I think you should see for yourself.
The reason he plans to murder Arlette is because she wants to sell the land where they live on, move to Omaha, open up a dress shop and divorce Wilfred and take custody of Henry. He doesn't want to sell the land or his son to leave him, so he convinces him to help him kill her.
Thomas Jane is really good as Wilfred James, the farmer who kills his wife and then deals with it. I think this is best role I've seen him do, although I've only seen two of his movies, this and The Punisher. But only seeing two things doesn't change how good an actor is. On an unrelated note, he also voiced The Punisher in the 2005 video game. Great game by the way.
Dylan Schmid is fine as Henry, the son of Wilfred who also goes through the consequences of this, but then runs away with his girlfriend.
The other cast is fine, but I can't really think of anything to say about them.
Overall, 1922 is a good movie, I probably should read the novella that this film was based off of. This is my least favorite of the three Stephen King films I've seen this year. As I said, I didn't see The Dark Tower. And I think It and Gerald's Game were better. Check it out if you want, it's free on Netflix if you have it.
Stay tuned over the next couple days for reviews of Death Note and Bright and then I'll do my ranking of the movies I saw this year.
7.5/10
Previous review - Die Hard 2: Die Harder
Next review - Death Note
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