Needful Things

Needful Things is the best Stephen King movie in years. It is, in a sense, a black comedy, but you have to be a little sick to laugh. I laughed. [27 Aug 1993, p.3F]

Solid B-level stuff, better than most filmed King novels. [27 Aug 1993, p.81]

Better than most Stephen King adaptations, mainly because an exceptionally strong cast adds substance to the facile storyline about a mysterious stranger, Leland Gaunt (von Sydow), who opens the antique shop of the title in Castle Rock, Maine, and, by tapping into the inhabitants' acquisitive desires, sets them at one another's throats. Read full review

Needful Things is hardly a cinema milestone -- it's a bit too episodic in chronicling the downfall of the town, and some of King's best bits are glossed over in favor of some of King's worst bits, but all things considered, it's still a hell of a good ride. Read full review

It has ideas as well as jolts, themes as well as special effects, characters as well as gore. But, as adapted by writer W. D. Richter and director Fraser Heston, these Things seem disappointingly diminished, squeezed and stuffed into a box too small. Read full review

Much slimmed down in a canny script by W. D. Richter, it has become a value-for-money horror movie with a streak of welcome black comedy. Read full review

As with many Stephen King adaptations, the problem no doubt partially lies in the necessity to condense the lengthy source novel, with material that might have given the story more depth lost in favor of packing in the horrific highlights Read full review

The screenplay by W.D. Richter (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai) turns Needful Things into a pitch-black comedy -- a rather lifeless one, unfortunately. There are more laughs than scares, though the movie still carries a creepy undercurrent of nastiness that pops up periodically, to great effect. [27 Aug 1993, p.G5]

In every small way Heston succeeds, but Needful Things ultimately is hard to sit through. It should have been edited with a meat ax. [27 Aug 1993, p.C4]

If it weren't for a delicious performance by Max Von Sydow as the suavely genteel Satan incarnate, Needful Things would be merely another Stephen King novel turned into trash for indiscriminate moviegoers. [27 Aug 1993, p.D12]

By now, we’ve come to expect certain things in movies adapted from Stephen King novels: brooding misanthropy, a pound or two of viscera, and — perhaps most horrifying of all — Hollywood actors delivering their lines with bad Maine accents. Needful Things delivers on said expectations, no more, no less. Read full review

Moviegoers aren’t likely to be similarly spellbound, as Heston employs a too-slow buildup to an explosion of mayhem that incorporates gruesome violence with awkward attempts at dark humor. Read full review

Needful Things is yet another one of those films based on a Stephen King story that inspires you to wonder why his stories don't make better films. The movie only has one note, which it plays over and over, sort of a Satanic water torture. It's not funny and it's not scary and it's all sort of depressing. Read full review

Though this is by no means the grisliest or most witless film made from one of Mr. King's horrific fantasies, it can lay claim to being the most unpleasant. Why? Because when you strip away the suspenseful buildup to a King story, you're often left with mechanical moralizing and crude, sophomoric small talk. Needful Things has more of both than any film could ever need. Read full review

Stephen King is a novelist, not a screenwriter. Which may be worth remembering on the admittedly slender chance that you go to see Needful Things for its dialogue, which is by turns cheap, cute, histrionic, profane and derivative. Read full review

Slow-paced and repetitive, Needful Things is overlong and overwrought, and the whole thing should be promptly exorcised. [27 Aug 1993, p.A]

Even by King-movie standards (and there are none lower), the misanthropy, grotesque humor, and all-out ugliness is itself in maximum overdrive. [27 Aug 1993, p.3D]

The message the movie preaches? The ills of a consumer society, I guess - all those needful things needlessly bought. And the best way to put that preaching into practice? Shut your wallet and pass on this little treat. [27 Aug 1993]